Acknowledgments

The technical and operational information contained in this handbook is the summary of the experience gained by members of the STScI COS Team and by the COS IDT at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Current and former members of the STScI COS Team include Alessandra Aloisi (lead), Tom Ake, Rossy Diaz, Van Dixon, Tom Donaldson, Linda Dressel, Scott Friedman, Parviz Ghavamian, Paul Goudfrooij, George Hartig, Phil Hodge, Mary Beth Kaiser, Tony Keyes, Claus Leitherer, Chris Long, Matt McMaster, Melissa McGrath, Derck Massa, Sami Niemi, Cristina Oliveira, Rachel Osten, Charles Proffitt, David Sahnow, Ken Sembach, Brittany Shaw, Ed Smith, David Soderblom, Katya Verner, Nolan Walborn, Alan Welty, Tom Wheeler, Brian York, and Wei Zheng. All of these individuals contributed to this volume, as did Russ Makidon.

The COS IDT includes James Green (Principal Investigator), Cynthia Froning (Project Scientist), Steven Penton, Steven Osterman (Instrument Scientist), Stéphane Béland, Eric Burgh, Charles Danforth, Kevin France, and Brian Keeney, all of whom provided information and assistance. COS co-investigators are Dennis Ebbets (Ball Aerospace), Sara R. Heap (GSFC), Claus Leitherer (STScI), Jeffrey Linsky (University of Colorado), Blair D. Savage (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Ken Sembach (STScI), J. Michael Shull (University of Colorado), Oswald Siegmund (University of California, Berkeley), Theodore P. Snow (University of Colorado), John Spencer and Alan Stern (Southwest Research Institute), and John T. Stocke (University of Colorado). K. Brownsberger, J. Morse, and E. Wilkinson have also been part of the COS IDT and have made significant contributions.

The prime contractor for COS is Ball Aerospace, Boulder, Colorado. The XDL detector was built at UC Berkeley by O. Siegmund, J. McPhate, J. Vallerga, and B. Welsh.

The Editor thanks Susan Rose (Senior Technical Editor) for her contributions to the production of this handbook.

References and Additional Information

This document relies heavily on information provided by the COS team in Boulder. The primary documents used are

Morse, J. 2004, Cosmic Origins Spectrograph Science Operations Requirements Document (referred to as OP-01);

Wilkinson, E. 2002, COS Calibration Requirements and Procedures, rev. B. (referred to as AV-03); and

Wilkinson, E. 2008, COS Prelaunch Calibration Data (referred to as AV-04).

We also used the STIS Instrument Handbook (Kim Quijano et al. 2007, v8.0).