McPherson is providing equipment for the Cosmic Origin Spectrograph, which will be deployed to help the Hubble Space telescope to observe faint ultraviolet targets – both in and out of this galaxy.
COS is currently undergoing extensive pre-flight testing at deep-UV wavelengths normally only accessible in space. A team from the University of Colorado Centre for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy contracted McPherson to provide a system for spectral testing and calibration on the COS optical train.
The instrumentation includes a vacuum monochromator and beam delivery optics to function at wavelengths from 115nm to 300nm. McPherson previously helped to calibrate space flight systems for the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS).
