Towards a data-driven model of the sky from low Earth orbit as observed by the Hubble Space Telescope

Abstract

The sky observed by space telescopes in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) can be dominated by stray light from multiple sources including the Earth, Sun and Moon. This stray light presents a significant challenge to missions that aim to make a secure measurement of the Extragalactic Background Light (EBL). In this work we quantify the impact of stray light on sky observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Advanced Camera for Surveys. By selecting on orbital parameters we successfully isolate images with sky that contain minimal and high levels of Earthshine. In addition, we find weather observations from CERES satellites correlates with the observed HST sky surface brightness indicating the value of incorporating such data to characterise the sky. Finally we present a machine learning model of the sky trained on the data used in this work to predict the total observed sky surface brightness. We demonstrate that our initial model is able to predict the total sky brightness under a range of conditions to within 3.9% of the true measured sky. Moreover, we find that the model matches the stray light-free observations better than current physical Zodiacal light models.

Accepted into the Astrophysical Journal (AJ), currently in press

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• JWST's PEARLS: Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science: Project Overview and First Results
• Modeling the Extragalactic Background Light and the Cosmic Star Formation History
• SKYSURF: Constraints on Zodiacal Light and Extragalactic Background Light through Panchromatic HST All-Sky Surface-Brightness Measurements: I. Survey Overview and Methods
• The cosmic radio background from 150 MHz--8.4 GHz, and its division into AGN and star-forming galaxy flux
• SKYSURF-4: Panchromatic HST All-Sky Surface-Brightness Measurement Methods and Results
• An Optical Daytime Astronomy Pathfinder for the Huntsman Telescope
• Daytime Photometry of Starlink Satellites with the Huntsman Telescope Pathfinder
• SKYSURF-11: A New Zodiacal Light Model Optimized for Optical Wavelengths