This paper describes the beginning of the Far-Infrared Surveyor mission study for NASAs Astrophysics Decadal 2020. We describe the scope of the study, and the open process approach of the Science and Technology Definition Team. We are currently developing the science cases and provide some preliminary highlights here. We note key areas for technological innovation and improvements necessary to make a Far-Infrared Surveyor mission a reality.
The Far-Infrared Surveyor (FIS) is one of two focal plane instruments on the AKARI satellite. FIS has four photometric bands at 65, 90, 140, and 160 um, and uses two kinds of array detectors. The FIS arrays and optics are designed to sweep the sky with high spatial resolution and redundancy. The actual scan width is more than eight arcmin, and the pixel pitch is matches the diffraction limit of the telescope. Derived point spread functions (PSFs) from observations of asteroids are similar to the optical model. Significant excesses, however, are clearly seen around tails of the PSFs, whose contributions are about 30% of the total power. All FIS functions are operating well in orbit, and its performance meets the laboratory characterizations, except for the two longer wavelength bands, which are not performing as well as characterized. Furthermore, the FIS has a spectroscopic capability using a Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS). Because the FTS takes advantage of the optics and detectors of the photometer, it can simultaneously make a spectral map. This paper summarizes the in-flight technical and operational performance of the FIS.
We present the characterization and calibration of the Slow-Scan observation mode of the Far-Infrared Surveyor (FIS) onboard the AKARI satellite. The FIS, one of the two focal-plane instruments on AKARI, has four photometric bands between 50--180 um with two types of Ge:Ga array detectors. In addition to the All-Sky Survey, FIS has also taken detailed far-infrared images of selected targets by using the Slow-Scan mode. The sensitivity of the Slow-Scan mode is one to two orders of magnitude better than that of the All-Sky Survey, because the exposure time on a targeted source is much longer. The point spread functions (PSFs) were obtained by observing several bright point-like objects such as asteroids, stars, and galaxies. The derived full widths at the half maximum (FWHMs) are ~30 for the two shorter wavelength bands and ~40 for the two longer wavelength bands, being consistent with those expected by the optical simulation, although a certain amount of excess is seen in the tails of the PSFs. The flux calibration has been performed by the observations of well-established photometric calibration standards (asteroids and stars) in a wide range of fluxes. After establishing the method of aperture photometry, the photometric accuracy for point-sources is better than +-15% in all of the bands expect for the longest wavelength.
We present the results of our preliminary study of all known Galactic PNe (included in the Kerber 2003 catalog) which are detected by the AKARI/FIS All-Sky Survey as identified in the AKARI/FIS Bright Source Catalog (BSC) Version Beta-1.
We present a general surface brightness correction method for compact extended sources imaged in the slow-scan pointed observation mode of the Far-Infrared Surveyor (FIS) aboard the AKARI Infrared Astronomical Satellite. Our method recovers correct surface brightness distribution maps by re-scaling archived raw FIS maps using the surface-brightness-dependent inverse FIS response function. The flux of a target source is then automatically corrected for as the simple sum of surface brightnesses within the adopted contour encircling the perimeter of the target (i.e., contour photometry). This correction method is contrasted to the previous aperture photometry method for point sources, which directly corrects for the target flux with a flux-dependent scaling law. The new surface brightness correction scheme is applicable to objects of any shape from unresolved point sources to resolved extended objects, as long as the target is not deemed diffuse, i.e., the total extent of the target source does not exceed too much more than a single FIS scan width of 10 arcmin. The new correction method takes advantage of the well-defined shape (i.e., the scale invariance) of the point-spread function, which enables us to adopt a power-law FIS response function. We analyze the point-source photometric calibrator data using the FIS AKARI Slow-scan Tool (FAST) and constrained the parameters of the adopted power-law FIS response function. We conclude that the photometric accuracy of the new correction method is better than 10% error based on comparisons with the expected fluxes of the photometric calibrators and that resulting fluxes without the present correction method can lead up to 230% overestimates or down to 50% underestimates.