학술논문
The Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph for the James Webb Space Telescope -- I. Instrument Overview and in-Flight Performance
Document Type
Working Paper
Author
Doyon, Rene; Willott, C. J; Hutchings, John B.; Sivaramakrishnan, Anand; Albert, Loic; Lafreniere, David; Rowlands, Neil; Vila, M. Begona; Martel, Andre R.; LaMassa, Stephanie; Aldridge, David; Artigau, Etienne; Cameron, Peter; Chayer, Pierre; Cook, Neil J.; Cooper, Rachel A.; Darveau-Bernier, Antoine; Dupuis, Jean; Earnshaw, Colin; Espinoza, Nestor; Filippazzo, Joseph C.; Fullerton, Alexander W.; Gaudreau, Daniel; Gawlik, Roman; Goudfrooij, Paul; Haley, Craig; Kammerer, Jens; Kendall, David; Lambros, Scott D.; Ignat, Luminita Ilinca; Maszkiewicz, Michael; McColgan, Ashley; Morishita, Takahiro; Ouellette, Nathalie N. -Q.; Pacifici, Camilla; Philippi, Natasha; Radica, Michael; Ravindranath, Swara; Rowe, Jason; Roy, Arpita; Saad, Karl; Sohn, Sangmo Tony; Talens, Geert Jan; Thatte, Deepashri; Taylor, Joanna M.; Vandal, Thomas; Volk, Kevin; Wander, Michel; Warner, Gerald; Zheng, Sheng-Hai; Zhou, Julia; Abraham, Roberto; Beaulieu, Mathilde; Benneke, Bjorn; Ferrarese, Laura; Johnstone, Doug; Kaltenegger, Lisa; Meyer, Michael R.; Pipher, Judy L.; Rameau, Julien; Rieke, Marcia; Salhi, Salma; Sawicki, Marcin
Source
Subject
Language
Abstract
The Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) is the science module of the Canadian-built Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) onboard the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). NIRISS has four observing modes: 1) broadband imaging featuring seven of the eight NIRCam broadband filters, 2) wide-field slitless spectroscopy (WFSS) at a resolving power of $\sim$150 between 0.8 and 2.2 $\mu$m, 3) single-object cross-dispersed slitless spectroscopy (SOSS) enabling simultaneous wavelength coverage between 0.6 and 2.8 $\mu$m at R$\sim$700, a mode optimized for exoplanet spectroscopy of relatively bright ($J<6.3$) stars and 4) aperture masking interferometry (AMI) between 2.8 and 4.8 $\mu$m enabling high-contrast ($\sim10^{-3}-10^{-4}$) imaging at angular separations between 70 and 400 milliarcsec for relatively bright ($M<8$) sources. This paper presents an overview of the NIRISS instrument, its design, its scientific capabilities, and a summary of in-flight performance. NIRISS shows significantly better response shortward of $\sim2.5\,\mu$m resulting in 10-40% sensitivity improvement for broadband and low-resolution spectroscopy compared to pre-flight predictions. Two time-series observations performed during instrument commissioning in the SOSS mode yield very stable spectro-photometry performance within $\sim$10% of the expected noise. The first space-based companion detection of the tight binary star AB Dor AC through AMI was demonstrated.