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T. R. Lauer (NOAO), J. A. Morse (ASU), Destiny Science Team
We describe a mission concept for a 1.8-meter near-infrared (NIR) grism-mode space telescope optimized to return richly sampled Hubble diagrams of Type Ia and Type II supernovae (SNe) over the redshift range 0.5 < z < 1.7 for determining cosmological distances, measuring the expansion rate of the Universe as a function of time, and characterizing the nature of dark energy. The central concept for our proposed Dark Energy Space Telescope (DESTINY) is an all-grism NIR survey camera. SNe will be discovered by repeated imaging of an area located at the north ecliptic pole. Grism spectra with resolving power l/Dl = R * 100 will provide broad-band spectrophotometry, redshifts, SNe classification, as well as valuable time-resolved diagnostic data for understanding the SN explosion physics. Our approach features only a single mode of operation, a single detector technology, and a single instrument. Although grism spectroscopy is slow compared to SN detection in any single broad-band filter for photometry, or to conventional slit spectra for spectral diagnostics, the multiplex advantage of observing a large field-of-view over a full octave in wavelength simultaneously makes this approach highly competitive.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35#5
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.