NIRST - A Near Infrared Telescope in Solar Orbit

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

The NIRST proposal in response to the NASA New Mission Concepts in Astrophysics AO was selected for further study this summer. ELW, PRME, Eric Becklin, Ian McLean and Tom Chester are the members of the NIRST science team. NIRST is a meter-class passively cooled telescope in a heliocentric orbit to observe in the 2.5 -- 5.3 microns window in the zodiacal light. This simple instrument will detect sources as faint as 50 nJy at 3.2 microns (L ~ 24.5) and 180 nJy at 4.6 microns (M ~ 22.5), and obtain spectra to L ~ 20. NIRST will provide L and M photometry on more than 10(8) very distant normal galaxies out to redshifts z > 6. This mission will also unequivocally answer the question of whether brown dwarfs, of any mass between 10(-3) M_&sun; and 0.07 M_&sun;, make up the halo of the Milky Way or contribute any significant ``missing mass'' in the solar neighborhood. Finally, if this mission can be approved and launched rapidly, it will provide more definite masses and velocities for the events detected by the on-going MACHO surveys.

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