Optical throughput and sensitivity of JWST NIRSpec
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- 121800X
Final published version, 1.1 MB, PDF document
To achieve its ambitious scientific goals, the Near-Infrared Spectrograph, NIRSpec, on board the Webb Space Telescope, needs to meet very demanding throughput requirements, here quantified in terms of photon-conversion efficiency (PCE). During the calibration activities performed for the instrument commissioning, we have obtained the first in-flight measurements of its PCE and also updated the modeling of the light losses occurring in the NIRSpec slit devices.
The measured PCE of NIRSpec fixed-slit and multi-object spectroscopy modes overall meets or exceeds the pre-launch model predictions. The results are more contrasted for the integral-field spectroscopy mode, where the differences with the model can reach -20%, above 4 mu m, and exceed +30%, below 2 mu m. Additionally, thanks to the high quality of the JWST point-spread function, our slit-losses, at the shorter wavelength, are significantly decreased with respect to the pre-flight modeling.
These results, combined with the confirmed low noise performance of the detectors, make of NIRSpec an exceptionally sensitive spectrograph.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 121800X |
Journal | Proceedings of SPIE |
Volume | 12180 |
Number of pages | 7 |
ISSN | 0277-786X |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 27 Sep 2022 |
Event | Conference on Space Telescopes and Instrumentation - Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave - Montreal, Canada Duration: 17 Jul 2022 → 22 Jul 2022 |
Conference
Conference | Conference on Space Telescopes and Instrumentation - Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave |
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Country | Canada |
City | Montreal |
Period | 17/07/2022 → 22/07/2022 |
- JWST, NIRSpec, near-infrared spectrograph, INFRARED SPECTROGRAPH NIRSPEC
Research areas
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