HST Cycle 26 Primer Scientific Instrument COS
The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS)
The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) is an ultraviolet spectrograph designed to optimize observations of point sources. It was installed during Servicing Mission 4 in the instrument bay previously occupied by COSTAR. COS is designed to be a very high throughput instrument, providing medium to low-resolution ultraviolet spectroscopy. The instrument has two channels for ultraviolet spectroscopy: Far-ultraviolet (FUV) and Near-ultraviolet (NUV).
Far-Ultraviolet Channel (COS/FUV)
COS/FUV uses a single optical element to disperse and focus light onto a cross-delay-line (XDL) detector; the result is high ultraviolet sensitivity from about 900 Å to 2050 Å with resolving power for different modes ranging from R ~ 1300 to ~ 17,000 (for detailed information on the resolving power of the FUV channel, please see the COS Instrument Handbook). This detector has heritage from the FUSE spacecraft. The active front surface of the detector is curved; to achieve the length required to capture the entire projected COS spectrum, two detector segments are placed end-to-end with a small gap between them. Each detector segment has an active area of 85 × 10 mm, 16384 × 1024 pixels, and a resolution element of 6 × 10 pixels.
The FUV channel has three gratings: G140L provides nearly complete coverage of the FUV wavelength range in a single exposure with a resolving power R ~ 1300 to 3500. G130M spans wavelengths between 900 Å and 1450 Å, and G160M covers the wavelength range between 1400 Å to 1775 Å; both these gratings provide resolving power R between 13,000 and 17,000 for wavelengths longer than 1150 Å (see the next paragraph for resolving power at shorter wavelengths). For all three FUV gratings, a small segment of the spectrum is lost to the gap between the two detector segments. This gap can be filled by obtaining two exposures offset in wavelength.
On October 2, 2017, routine operations of the COS FUV channel were moved to a new Lifetime Position, LP4. Since that date COS/FUV observations have been executed by default at LP4, with the exception of the blue modes (G130M/1055 and G130M/1096) that remain at LP2. The move to LP4 was made in order to mitigate the effect of gain sag and provide the community with access to an unsagged region of the FUV detector. LP4 is located 5.0 arcseconds below LP1 in the cross-dispersion direction, and 2.5 arcseconds below LP3. The spectral resolution at LP4 has been confirmed to be ~10-15% below its value at LP3, depending on cenwave and wavelength, as expected. The move to LP4 is accompanied by a new set of restrictions on detector segment, FP-POS position, and target acquisition mode, which are designed to maximize the lifetime of the FUV detector, known as the COS2025 policies. These restrictions are discussed in full on the COS2025 website.
Two new central wavelengths (cenwaves) are being offered in Cycle 26 for COS/FUV observations, named G140L/800 and G160M/1533. The G140L/800 setting allows for contiguous coverage of the entire spectral region from 800 to 1950 Angstroms on a single detector segment (FUVA) with a low spectral height below 1150 Angstroms, allowing higher S/N for background-limited observations. The G160M/1533 setting extends coverage at the short-wavelength end of G160M by 44 Angstroms to overlap with the longest wavelengths covered by cenwave G130M/1222, and is otherwise expected to be very similar to the existing G160M/1577 cenwave. This allows a broad range of FUV wavelengths to be covered at good resolution by just two cenwave settings (1222+1533). For full details, see the COS Instrument Handbook.
Spectral Resolution of the COS/FUV Detector at LP4 as a function of wavelength and cenwave (solid lines). These predictions have been derived from optical models and confirmed with on-orbit observations at LP4. The corresponding curves at LP3 are shown as dashed lines, for comparison. The 1055 and 1096 cenwaves remain at LP2.
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Near-Ultraviolet Channel (NUV)
COS/NUV uses a 1024 × 1024 pixel Cs2Te MAMA detector that is essentially identical to the STIS/NUV MAMA except that it has a substantially lower dark count. Four gratings may be used for spectroscopy. Portions of the first-order spectra from the gratings are directed onto the detector by three separate flat mirrors. Each mirror produces a single stripe of the spectrum on the detector. For the low-dispersion grating, G230L, one or two first-order spectrum stripes are available, each covering ~400 Å of the entire 1700 Å to 3200 Å range at resolving power R ~2100 to 3900, depending upon wavelength. For high-dispersion gratings G185M, G225M, and G285M, three non-contiguous stripes of 35 Å are available in each exposure at resolving powers of 16,000 to 24,000. Panchromatic (1650 Å to 3200 Å) images of small fields (less than two arcseconds) may also be obtained at ~0.06 arcsec or greater resolution in imaging mode.
COS FUV XDL Gain Sag
Prolonged exposure to light causes the COS FUV XDL detectors to become less efficient at photon-to-electron conversion, a phenomenon called “gain sag.” When a particular region of the detector is increasingly used, there is a corresponding decrease in the “pulse height” of the charge cloud generated by an individual photon. As long as the pulse heights are above a minimum threshold needed to distinguish real photons from background events, there is no loss in sensitivity. But as the average pulse height in a particular region approaches and then drops below this threshold, real photon pulses are increasingly misidentified as background, causing a decreasing effective throughput. Since the amount of gain sag increases with the total amount of the previous illumination, the effects first appear in regions of the detector that are illuminated by the bright Lyman Alpha airglow line, but eventually, the entire spectrum is affected.
STScI is undertaking a number of actions to mitigate the effects of gain sag and extend the lifetime of the COS FUV XDL detector, including a series of lifetime moves to unsagged portions of the detector. The most recent move to Lifetime Position 4 (LP4) occurred on 2 October 2017. LP4 is now the default for all FUV observations except the blue modes of G130M (1055/1096), which remain at LP2. See the COS Instrument Handbook for full details.
A new two-zone spectral extraction algorithm is used by the COS pipeline to calibrate data obtained at LP3 and LP4. This new extraction method is optimized for observations of point sources using the PSA aperture only. FUV spectra of extended sources and FUV spectra obtained with the BOA will be poorly calibrated. As a result, proposers planning to use COS/FUV for science observations with the BOA aperture (whether point source or extended) should carefully consider the impact of the poor calibration on their science goals. See the COS website for updated information on the calibration of the LP4 position.
Optimizing the Science Return of COS
Fixed-pattern noise in the COS detectors limits the signal-to-noise that can be achieved in a single exposure (see Section 5.8 of the COS Instrument Handbook). A simple way to remove these detector features is to obtain exposures at multiple FP-POS or CENWAVE settings, both of which shift the spectrum on the detector, and combine them in wavelength space. This is especially important for the COS FUV detector as the fixed pattern noise is larger and more poorly characterized than that of the NUV detector. In addition, the consistent use of multiple FP-POS positions in the G130M and G140L 1105 Å settings will spread the bright geocoronal Lyman Alpha illumination and significantly delay the appearance of gain sag effects.
Since this simple shift-and-add technique significantly improves the signal-to-noise ratio of the resulting spectrum, and will extend the lifetime of the COS FUV detector, the use of four FP-POS is required for all FUV cenwaves except G130M/1291, for which two FP-POS (e and 4) are required unless a strong scientific justification to do otherwise is provided in Phase I. This can be achieved by using the FP-POS=ALL parameter in APT for each CENWAVE or by spreading out the four FP-POS positions over multiple orbits within a visit for each CENWAVE or over multiple visits to the same target. Proposers who do not intend to use all four FP-POS for each CENWAVE setting must justify their observing strategy in the Phase I proposals. A modest reduction in observational overheads will not normally be considered sufficient justification for not using all four FP-POS settings.
COS exposures may be obtained in either a time-tagged photon address (TIME-TAG) mode, in which the position, arrival time, and pulse height (for FUV observations) of each detected photon are saved in an event stream, or in accumulation (ACCUM) mode, in which only the positions of the photon events are recorded. In TIME-TAG mode, which is the default observing mode, the time resolution is 32 milliseconds. ACCUM mode is designed for bright targets with high count rates that would otherwise overwhelm the detector electronics. Because the lower information content of ACCUM data reduces their utility for archival researchers, its use must be justified for each target. For details, see Section 5.2 of the COS Instrument Handbook.
In both TIME-TAG and ACCUM mode, the Astronomer’s Proposal Tool (APT) automatically schedules wavelength calibration exposures, either during science exposures or between them (see Section 5.7 of the COS Instrument Handbook). The COS data reduction pipeline (CALCOS) uses these data to adjust the zero-point of the wavelength solution for the extracted spectra. It is possible to suppress the taking of wavelength calibration spectra, but since it significantly lessens the archival quality of COS data, it must be justified.
Observers who wish to employ non-optimal observing techniques must strongly justify their observing strategy in the “Description of Observations” section of their Phase I proposal. Non-optimal observing techniques should not normally be adopted solely for the purpose of producing a modest reduction of the observational overheads; in such cases, the observer should normally just request adequate time to use the recommended optimal strategy (see HST Cycle 26 Preparation of the PDF Attachment).