The Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS) is a sounding rocket mission that completed a successful flight from the White Sands Missile Range on July 30, 2021. MaGIXS captured spatially resolved soft X-ray spectra from portions of two solar active regions during its roughly 5-minute flight. The instrument was originally designed as a grazing incidence slit spectrograph but flew in a slit-less configuration that produced overlapping spectroheliograms. For the second flight, MaGIXS-2, the instrument has been reconfigured to a more simplified optical layout that reuses the Wolter-I telescope and blazed varied-line space reflective grating. The field stop at the telescope focal plane and the finite conjugate spectrometer mirror pair have been removed – the telescope now directly feeds the grating. Additionally, an identical but new 2k x 1k CCD camera has been built for this flight. The MaGIXS-2 data product will again be overlapping spectroheliograms of at least one solar active region, but with improved resolution, a larger field of view and increased effective area. Here we present the updated instrument layout, the expected performance, the integration and calibration approach, and proposed future improvements, including the implementation of additional complimentary spectral diagnostics.
FURST is a sounding rocket mission designed to acquire the first high quality, full-disk, UV Solar spectra in the range of 1200 - 1800 ̊A. The instrument uses a set of cylindrical optical elements, acting in place of a slit, to collect light from the entire solar disk in combination with a Rowland circle spectrometer, to generate high resolution spectra, ≥2 ×104λ/∆λ, without scanning a slit over the spatial extent of the Sun. The instrument requires absolute radiometric and spectral calibration before and after flight in order to analyze data products and meet science goals. We present an update on the portable calibration system designed to meet ambitious calibration requirements. The system consists of a vacuum chamber, a Pt hollow cathode lamp, collimating optics and NIST calibrated photodiodes. Absolute radiometric calibration of ≤15% and wavelength calibration corresponding to ±3km/s is expected.
The Full-sun Ultraviolet Rocket SpecTrograph (FURST) is a sounding rocket designed to acquire the first full-disk integrated high resolution vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) spectra of the Sun. The data enable analysis of the Sun comparable to stellar spectra measured by astronomical instruments such as those on board the Hubble Space Telescope. The mission is jointly operated by teams at Montana State University (MSU), developing the instrument, and Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), developing the camera and calibration systems, and is scheduled to launch from White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, in 2022. This mission requires the development of a pre- and post-launch calibration plan for absolute radiometric and wavelength calibration to reliably generate Hubble analogue spectra. Absolute radiometric calibration, though initially planned to be performed at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) calibration facilities, is now planned to be completed with a portable VUV calibration system provided by MSFC, due to instrument incompatibilities with NIST infrastructure. The portable calibration system is developed to provide absolute wavelength calibration and track changes in calibration over the duration of the mission. The portable calibration system is composed mainly of a VUV collimator equipped with an extreme ultraviolet line source and calibrated photodiodes. The calibration system is developed to accommodate both repeatable wavelength and radiometric testing of the FURST instrument at various test sites before and after launch. Presented here are the requirements, design, and implementation of this portable calibration system with a focus on those features most significant to radiometric measurements.
Multiphoton microscopy (MPM) imaging of intrinsic two-photon excited fluorescence (TPEF) is performed on humanized sickle cell disease (SCD) mouse model splenic tissue. Distinct morphological and spectral features associated with SCD are identified and discussed in terms of diagnostic relevance. Specifically, spectrally unique splenic iron-complex deposits are identified by MPM; this finding is supported by TPEF spectroscopy and object size to standard histopathological methods. Further, iron deposits are found at higher concentrations in diseased tissue than in healthy tissue by all imaging methods employed here including MPM, and therefore, may provide a useful biomarker related to the disease state. These newly characterized biomarkers allow for further investigations of SCD in live animals as a means to gain insight into the mechanisms impacting immune dysregulation and organ malfunction, which are currently not well understood.
We present our study on compact, label-free dissolved lipid sensing by combining capillary electrophoresis
separation in a PDMS microfluidic chip online with mid-infrared (MIR) absorption spectroscopy for biomarker
detection. On-chip capillary electrophoresis is used to separate the biomarkers without introducing any extrinsic
contrast agent, which reduces both cost and complexity. The label free biomarker detection could be done by
interrogating separated biomarkers in the channel by MIR absorption spectroscopy. Phospholipids biomarkers of
degenerative neurological, kidney, and bone diseases are detectable using this label free technique. These
phospholipids exhibit strong absorption resonances in the MIR and are present in biofluids including urine, blood
plasma, and cerebrospinal fluid. MIR spectroscopy of a 12-carbon chain phosphatidic acid (PA) (1,2-dilauroyl-snglycero-
3-phosphate (sodium salt)) dissolved in N-methylformamide, exhibits a strong amide peak near
wavenumber 1660 cm-1 (wavelength 6 μm), arising from the phosphate headgroup vibrations within a low-loss
window of the solvent. PA has a similar structure to many important phospholipids molecules like
phosphatidylcholine (PC), phosphatidylinositol (PI), phosphatidylethanolamine (PE), phosphatidylglycerol (PG),
and phosphatidylserine (PS), making it an ideal molecule for initial proof-of-concept studies. This newly proposed
detection technique can lead us to minimal sample preparation and is capable of identifying several biomarkers from
the same sample simultaneously.
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