An international group of researchers, whose membership includes the lab of Professor Shuji Matsuura at the Kwansei Gakuin University School of Science (Infrared Astronomy), the Kyushu Institute of Technology, Tokyo City University, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), conducted an observation experiment using a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) rocket launched from the White Sands Missile Range (New Mexico, USA) on June 8, with the aim of clarifying early celestial objects (hereafter, objects). Named CIBER-2, the project is based on the results of CIBER (Cosmic Infrared Background ExpeRiment), an observation experiment which the group made progress on via a total of four rocket launches from 2009 to 2013. The purpose of CIBER-2 is to investigate the first stars in the universe, primordial black holes, and other early objects by observing cosmic infrared background radiation, which is a combination of infrared radiation emitted from faraway stars that cannot be captured by ground-based telescopes.

This time, the launched rocket carried a newly developed reflecting telescope, which is ten times more sensitive than what was used in the CIBER experiment. The rocket was launched to an altitude of about 300 km, where it would be unaffected by the Earth's atmosphere, and the researchers observed the cosmic background radiation for about five minutes before it fell. For CIBER-2, they observed fluctuations in multiple wavelengths, from visible light to near-infrared radiation, with a higher degree of precision that was not achieved for the CIBER experiment. In the future, the team will analyze the acquired data to search for traces of early objects.