Near Ultraviolet Spectrograph for Balloon Platform

Abstract

Small and compact scientific payloads may be easily designed constructed and flown on high altitude balloons. Despite the fact that large orbital observatories provide accurate observations and statistical studies of remote and/or faint space sources, small telescopes on board balloons or rockets are still attractive because of their low cost and rapid response time. We describe here a near ultraviolet (NUV) spectrograph designed to be flown on a high–altitude balloon platform. Our basic optical design is a modified Czerny-Turner system using off the shelf optics. We compare different methods of aberration corrections in such a system. We intend the system to be portable and scalable to different telescopes. The use of reflecting optics reduces the transmission loss in UV. We plan on using an image intensified CMOS sensor operating in photon counting mode as the detector of choice.