Precision Imaging Technique to Enable Time-Domain Far-IR Astrophysics

Far-infrared astronomy is on the verge of a revolution in which giant gains in sensitivity will allow unprecedented use of the time domain to reveal the inner workings of protostars, solar systems, and distant galactic nuclei. To do so will require advancement in data analysis methods beyond Herschel and Spitzer as well as careful consideration of observing modes and science traceability — all especially timely as the next far-IR missions are being formulated. The project proposed here pushes the state-of-the-art forward for far-IR imaging, particularly targeting cutting-edge time-domain astrophysics with Origins Space Telescope (OST), and with broader benefits. Specific goals for the research are driven by key questions in far-IR astrophysics for the next decades and the capabilities of future far-IR missions currently under study — OST, the Galaxy Evolution Probe (GEP), and SPICA. Starting from the state-of-the-art established by archival data products from Herschel, Spitzer, and other NASA missions, we propose to achieve improvements in four key aspects of imaging precision by 1—2 orders of magnitude. We highlight three classes of astrophysical objects requiring far-IR observations with exquisite precision on minute to decade timescales. 1) Repeated far-IR observations of protostars surrounded by protoplanetary disks will provide crucial and unique statistical constraint to models of mass assembly and uncover a wealth of phenomena, including instabilities in the accretion disk and Quasi-Periodic Oscillations driven by orbiting mass concentrations. 2) Precise far-IR observations play a key role in determining the sizes and surface properties of Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) — which comprise a reservoir of frozen water and a fossil record of the early Solar System. OST will be competitive with the large ground-based optical survey telescopes of its generation for discovery of TNOs, but unprecedented precision will be needed to detect them amidst the extragalactic background. 3) Far-IR extragalactic surveys with OST, GEP, and SPICA will for the first time determine rates and distributions of far-IR variability among samples of up to 10^8 galaxies, discover classes of highly variable AGN, and use reverberation mapping to characterize nuclear dust distributions at high redshift. Beyond the measurement of flux densities, a substantial improvement to precision has additional benefits to the community using NASA's far-IR data — for example, much better spatial and spectral separation of debris disk emission from stellar photospheric emission. We will also provide quantitative feedback on the observing strategies used on Herschel and Spitzer, looking ahead to OST. Our work on this project follows the example of a past effort by several of us to re-calibrate and re-process Herschel imaging data on Sgr A*. Using several experimental methods beyond the standard pipeline, pioneered by our team, we were able to achieve a factor of 10 improvement in precision and a new science result. For this broader project, we have added personnel with years of experience with the detectors, science data, and pipelines for Spitzer, Herschel, and JCMT submillimeter telescope. We have identified demonstration data sets from Herschel, Spitzer, and SOFIA which we will run through multiple iterations of algorithm development, data processing, and image study, allowing us to test periodically versus project goals. We will seek independent feedback on our results and approaches, including peer review and outside conferences and workshops. The main deliverables from this three-year project are: 1) a detailed written description of algorithms, quantitative performance data, and other lessons learned, in the form of a report and technical/science papers; 2) improved science images posted on the public IRSA archive at IPAC. This work has the potential to discover time-domain signals that were hiding in the existing NASA far-IR data archives.

The Astrophysics Research and Analysis program (APRA) supports suborbital and suborbital-class investigations, development of detectors and supporting technology, laboratory astrophysics, and limited ground based observing. Basic research proposals in these areas are solicited for investigations that are relevant to NASA's programs in astronomy and astrophysics, including the entire range of photons, gravitational waves, and particle astrophysics. The emphasis of this solicitation is on technologies and investigations that advance NASA astrophysics missions and goals.

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