Observations of Pt/Ne hollow cathode lamps similar to those used on the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph

Published

July 7, 2008

Author(s)

Gillian Nave, Craig J. Sansonetti, S. V. Penton, Nathaniel Cunningham, Matthew Beasley, Steve Osterman, F Kerber, Charles D. Keyes, Michael R. Rosa

Abstract

We report accelerated aging tests on three Pt/Ne lamps from the same manufacturing run as lamps installed on the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). One lamp was aged in air at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) at a current of 10 mA and 50 % duty cycle (30 s on, 30 s off) until failure. Two other lamps were aged by the COS instrument development team in a vacuum chamber. Initial radiometrically calibrated spectra were taken of all three lamps at NIST. Calibrated spectra of the air-aged lamp were taken after 206 h, 500 h, 778 h, 783 h and 897 h of operation. Spectra of the vacuum-aged lamps were taken after 500 h for both lamps, and after 1000 h for one of the lamps. During vacuum-aging, the lamp voltage, photometric stability and temperature were monitored. In all three lamps, total output dropped by less than 15 % over 500 h. We conclude that the lamps satisfy the requirements of COS in both lifetime and spectral stability.

Citation

Applied Optics

Volume

7011

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1117/12.789147

Local Download

Keywords

Spectroscopy, ultraviolet

Citation

Nave, G. , Sansonetti, C. , Penton, S. , Cunningham, N. , Beasley, M. , Osterman, S. , Kerber, F. , Keyes, C. and Rosa, M. (2008), Observations of Pt/Ne hollow cathode lamps similar to those used on the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, Applied Optics, [online], https://doi.org/10.1117/12.789147, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=909854 (Accessed October 11, 2025)