Simulations and Interpretations of BETTII Observations
Abstract
BETTII (Balloon Experimental Twin Telescope for Infra-red Interferometry) is an 8-meter baseline far-infrared (30-90 microns) interferometer mission on a balloon. Its capabilities of spatially resolved spectroscopy with 0.5” resolution are aimed at studying clustered star formation and galaxy evolution. With its 9x9 detector arrays, we can perform relative astrometry over a 2’x2’ field of view and get source spectral and size information. Since BETTII is a two-element fixed baseline length interferometer and balloon flight time is short, its u-v coverage is very limited. Standard inversion techniques cannot be used to image the emission as is typically done for radio interferometers.We simulate the BETTII observations using a hypothetical star forming region as the input and taking into account the instrument characteristics and limitations. We derive astrometric, spectroscopic, and morphological information from the simulated output through model fitting. Varying the input model parameters that we use to define the dust emission from the protostar, we produce sets of simulated outputs. By comparing these outputs with the hypothetical observations, we explore how well the BETTII observations constrain the defining parameters of the young stellar system.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #229
- Pub Date:
- January 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AAS...22915514D