ARlogo Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 2001. 39: 249-307
Copyright © 2001 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved

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3.2. Background Measurements from Rockets

The early attempts to observe the CIB were mostly carried out with instruments on sounding rockets. Rocket-borne measurements of the diffuse infrared sky brightness continued into the 1990s from near- to far-infrared wavelengths (Murdock & Price 1985, Matsumoto et al. 1988a, b, Noda et al. 1992, Matsuura et al. 1994, Kawada et al. 1994). The rocket-based efforts increased our understanding of the dominant astrophysical contributions to the infrared sky brightness and provided some upper limits or claims of possible detection of the CIB. However, the limited observation time and sky coverage, and the systematic error issues associated with rocket observations, such as emissions from rocket exhaust, residual atmosphere, and Earthshine, prevented achieving compelling evidence for detection of the CIB.