Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userPreparing the NIRSpec/JWST science data calibration: from ground testing to sky
159
0
0.0
(
0
)
Added by
Catarina Alves De Oliveira Dr.
Publication date
2018
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
The Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) is one of four instruments aboard the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). NIRSpec is developed by ESA with AIRBUS Defence & Space as prime contractor. The calibration of its various observing modes is a fundamental step to achieve the mission science goals and provide users with the best quality data from early on in the mission. Extensive testing of NIRSpec on the ground, aided by a detailed model of the instrument, allow us to derive initial corrections for the foreseeable calibrations. We present a snapshot of the current calibration scheme that will be revisited once JWST is in orbit.
rate research
Read More
Context: The NIRSpec instrument for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can be operated in multiobject (MOS), long-slit, and integral field (IFU) mode with spectral resolutions from 100 to 2700. Its MOS mode uses about a quarter of a million individually addressable minislits for object selection, covering a field of view of $sim$9 $mathrm{arcmin}^2$. Aims: The pipeline used to extract wavelength-calibrated spectra from NIRSpec detector images relies heavily on a model of NIRSpec optical geometry. We demonstrate how dedicated calibration data from a small subset of NIRSpec modes and apertures can be used to optimize this parametric model to the necessary levels of fidelity. Methods: Following an iterative procedure, the initial fiducial values of the model parameters are manually adjusted and then automatically optimized, so that the model predicted location of the images and spectral lines from the fixed slits, the IFU, and a small subset of the MOS apertures matches their measured location in the main optical planes of the instrument. Results: The NIRSpec parametric model is able to reproduce the spatial and spectral position of the input spectra with high fidelity. The intrinsic accuracy (1-sigma, RMS) of the model, as measured from the extracted calibration spectra, is better than 1/10 of a pixel along the spatial direction and better than 1/20 of a resolution element in the spectral direction for all of the grating-based spectral modes. This is fully consistent with the corresponding allocation in the spatial and spectral calibration budgets of NIRSpec.
The focal plane of the NIRSpec instrument on board the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is equipped with two Teledyne H2RG near-IR detectors, state-of-the-art HgCdTe sensors with excellent noise performance. Once JWST is in space, however, the noise level in NIRSpec exposures will be affected by the cosmic ray (CR) fluence at the JWST orbit and our ability to detect CR hits and to mitigate their effect. We have simulated the effect of CRs on NIRSpec detectors by injecting realistic CR events onto dark exposures that were recently acquired during the JWST cryo-vacuum test campaign undertaken at Johnson Space Flight Center. Here we present the method we have implemented to detect the hits in the exposure integration cubes, to reject the affected data points within our ramp-to-slope processing pipeline (the prototype of the NIRSpec official pipeline), and assess the performance of this method for different choices of the algorithm parameters. Using the optimal parameter set to reject CR hits from the data, we estimate that, for an exposure length of 1,000 s, the presence of CRs in space will lead to an increase of typically ~7% in the detector noise level with respect to the on-ground performance, and the corresponding decrease in the limiting sensitivity of the instrument, for the medium and high-spectral resolution modes.
Site-testing is crucial for achieving the goal of scientific research and analysis of meteorological and optical observing conditions is one of the basic tasks of it. As one of three potential sites to host 12-meter Large Optical/infrared Telescope (LOT), Muztagh-ata site which is located on the Pamirs Plateau in west Chinas Xinjiang began its site-testing task in the spring of 2017. In this paper, we firstly start with an introduction to the site and then present a statistical analysis of the ground-level meteorological properties such as air temperature, barometric pressure, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, recorded by automatic weather station with standard meteorological sensors for two-year long. We also show the monitoring results of sky brightness during this period.
The next decade will feature a growing number of massive ground-based photometric, spectroscopic, and time-domain surveys, including those produced by DECam, DESI, and LSST. The NOAO Data Lab was launched in 2017 to enable efficient exploration and analysis of large surveys, with particular focus on the petabyte-scale holdings of the NOAO Archive and their associated catalogs. The Data Lab mission and future development align well with two of the NSFs Big Ideas, namely Harnessing Data for 21st Century Science and Engineering and as part of a network to contribute to Windows on the Universe: The Era of Multi-messenger Astrophysics. Along with other Science Platforms, the Data Lab will play a key role in scientific discoveries from surveys in the next decade, and will be crucial to maintaining a level playing field as datasets grow in size and complexity.
The daytime sky has been recently demonstrated as a useful calibration tool for deriving polarization cross-talk properties of large astronomical telescopes. The Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) and other large telescopes under construction can benefit from precise polarimetric calibration of large mirrors. Several atmospheric phenomena and instrumental errors potentially limit the techniques accuracy. At the 3.67m AEOS telescope on Haleakala, we have performed a large observing campaign with the HiVIS spectropolarimeter to identify limitations and develop algorithms for extracting consistent calibrations. Effective sampling of the telescope optical configurations and filtering of data for several derived parameters provide robustness to the derived Mueller matrix calibrations. Second-order scattering models of the sky show that this method is relatively insensitive to multiple-scattering in the sky provided calibration observations are done in regions of high polarization degree. The technique is also insensitive to assumptions about telescope induced polarization provided the mirror coatings are highly reflective. Zemax-derived polarization models show agreement between the functional dependence of polarization predictions and the corresponding on-sky calibrations.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
