Abstract
ACCESS, Absolute Color Calibration Experiment for Standard Stars, is a series of rocket-borne sub-orbital missions and ground-based experiments that will enable improvements in the precision of the astrophysical flux scale through the transfer of absolute laboratory detector standards from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to a network of stellar standards with a calibration accuracy of 1% and a spectral resolving power of 500 across the 0.35 to 1.7 micron bandpass of the cross dispersed (m=1-4) echelle spectrograph fed by a 15.5-inch Dall-Kirkham Cassegrain telescope. Fabrication, integration, and automation of the ground-based calibration subsystem is in progress. Confirmation of initial detector performance and the detailed ground based characterization of the detector will begin in the next few weeks. The ACCESS design, calibration strategy, and ground-based integration and test plans and status will be presented. Launch is expected within the year. NASA sounding rocket grant NNX08AI65G and DOE DE-FG02-07ER41506 support this work.
ACCESS: Absolute Color Calibration Experiment for Standard Stars
ACCESS, Absolute Color Calibration Experiment for Standard Stars, is a series of rocket-borne sub-orbital missions and ground-based experiments that will enable improvements in the precision of the astrophysical flux scale through the transfer of absolute laboratory detector standards from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to a network of stellar standards with a calibration accuracy of 1% and a spectral resolving power of 500 across the 0.35 to 1.7 micron bandpass of the cross dispersed (m=1-4) echelle spectrograph fed by a 15.5-inch Dall-Kirkham Cassegrain telescope. Fabrication, integration, and automation of the ground-based calibration subsystem is in progress. Confirmation of initial detector performance and the detailed ground based characterization of the detector will begin in the next few weeks. The ACCESS design, calibration strategy, and ground-based integration and test plans and status will be presented. Launch is expected within the year. NASA sounding rocket grant NNX08AI65G and DOE DE-FG02-07ER41506 support this work.