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The MESSIER surveyor: unveiling the ultra-low surface brightness universe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2017

David Valls-Gabaud  and
the MESSIER collaboration
David Valls-Gabaud
Affiliation:
CNRS, Observatoire de Paris, France Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, UK
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Abstract

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The MESSIER surveyor is a small mission designed at exploring the very low surface brightness universe. The satellite will drift-scan the entire sky in 6 filters covering the 200–1000 nm range, reaching unprecedented surface brightness levels of 34 and 37 mag arcsec−2 in the optical and UV, respectively. These levels are required to achieve the two main science goals of the mission: to critically test the ΛCDM paradigm of structure formation through (1) the detection and characterisation of ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, which are predicted to be extremely abundant around normal galaxies, but which remain elusive; and (2) tracing the cosmic web, which feeds dark matter and baryons into galactic haloes, and which may contain the reservoir of missing baryons at low redshifts. A large number of science cases, ranging from stellar mass loss episodes to intracluster light through fluctuations in the cosmological UV-optical background radiation are free by-products of the full-sky maps produced.

Keywords

Cosmologydwarf galaxiesstellar populationscosmic webintergalactic mediumdiffuse radiationspace instrumentation
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 11 , Symposium S321: Formation and Evolution of Galaxy Outskirts , March 2016 , pp. 199 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2017 

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