Abstract
The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) is an ultraviolet spectrograph scheduled for installation in the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) during HST Servicing Mission 4, currently planned to occur in August 2008. COS was designed to maximize sensitivity to faint point sources, and will provide limiting sensitivities at moderate spectral resolutions (R∼20,000) that are a factor of 2 to >10 times better than those provided by previous ultraviolet spectrographs on HST. Here, we present an overview of the some of the science areas that will be addressed by COS observations and provide a summary of the capabilities of COS and the expected on-orbit performance.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Morse, J., et al.: Proc. SPIE 3356, 361 (1998)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
For the COS Instrument Development Team.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Froning, C.S., Green, J.C. The cosmic origins spectrograph: capabilities and prelaunch performance. Astrophys Space Sci 320, 181–185 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-008-9758-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-008-9758-y