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The cosmic origins spectrograph: capabilities and prelaunch performance

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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.

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Correspondence to Cynthia S. Froning.

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For the COS Instrument Development Team.

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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

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-008-9758-y

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