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Targets of opportunity source catalog, prioritization, scheduler and related mechanics for the EUSO-SPB2 mission, The
Wistrand, Hannah
Wistrand, Hannah
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2024
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The Extreme Universe Space Observatory on a Super Pressure Balloon 2 (EUSO-SPB2) was developed to observe ultra high energy cosmic rays and very high energy (VHE) neutrinos from suborbital space. These earth-skimming VHE tau-neutrinos can interact with the Earth’s limb to produce tau leptons which can exit the Earth and decay to initiate extensive air showers (EASs). Below PeV energies, ground-based detectors such as IceCube and ANTARES have utilized km3-scale mediums to observe these EASs via their optical Cherenkov emissions. However, at higher energies, much of the sky becomes inaccessible to ground-based detectors because of Earth attenuation effects. As the interest in these multi-messenger particles increases, the development of space-based detectors is ongoing. EUSO-SPB2 was launched on May 13th, 2023 from Wanaka, NZ on a high-altitude balloon with a state-of-the-art Cherenkov Telescope (CT) which pioneered a solution to the attenuation problem and had the ability to respond in real-time to potential neutrino alerts throughout the sky. When the CT was pointed below the limb, the mission of the EUSO-SPB2 Targets of Opportunity (ToO) program was to follow up on astrophysical transient source alerts and selected steady state sources by searching for upward-going optical Cherenkov emission from PeV-scale EASs induced by tau neutrinos. To do this, a software program that collects ToO alerts from several online databases, sorts through these alerts, prioritizes and schedules them was developed alongside a mechanical system to point the CT. The flight lasted 1 day, 12 hours and 53 minutes. This short flight did not allow for ample time to test the prepared ToO software or to point the CT at a ToO. Studies are currently ongoing to test this software with data from longer balloon flights. These follow-up mechanisms utilized by the CT to view ToOs are the subject of this thesis.
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