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CIBER

CIBER, the Cosmic Infrared Background ExpeRiment, was a sounding rocket payload designed to probe the extragalactic background light (EBL) in the near infrared. Equipped with two wide-field imagers and both a low-resolution and narrow-band spectrometer, CIBER was designed to measure the spatial fluctuation signature and absolute electromagnetic spectrum of the EBL from 0.8 to 2 microns.

CIBER payload

 

After flying three successfully recovered missions aboard NASA Black Brant IX rockets between 2009 and 2012, CIBER had its final flight in 2013. The last mission was aboard a four stage Black Brant XII rocket which achieved an apogee of 600km.

 

CIBER launch

 

CIBER data has been used to constrain the amplitude of Intra-halo light in the local universe (Zemcov et al 2014), measure the NIR amplitude and spectrum of the diffuse-galactic light (DGL) (Arai et al 2015), quantify the polarization and silicate absorption levels in the interplanetary dust cloud of our solar system (Arai et al 2015), and quantify the isotropic EBL spectrum (Matsuura et al 2017). Follow-up analysis of the fluctuation results using fourth flight data are currently underway, which will provide improved constraints on the spatial power spectrum of the EBL.