Performance of NIRCam on JWST in Flight

Creators: Rieke, Marcia J.; Kelly, Douglas M.; Misselt, Karl; Stansberry, John; Boyer, Martha; Beatty, Thomas; Egami, Eiichi; Florian, Michael; Greene, Thomas P.; Hainline, Kevin; Leisenring, Jarron; Roellig, Thomas; Schlawin, Everett; Sun, Fengwu; Tinnin, Lee; Williams, Christina C.; Willmer, Christopher N. A.; Wilson, Debra; Clark, Charles R.; Rohrbach, Scott; Brooks, Brian; Canipe, Alicia; Correnti, Matteo; DiFelice, Audrey; Gennaro, Mario; Girard, Julian; Hartig, George; Hilbert, Bryan; Koekemoer, Anton M.; Nikolov, Nikolay K.; Pirzkal, Norbert; Rest, Armin; Robberto, Massimo; Sunnquist, Ben; Telfer, Randal; Wu, Chi Rai; Ferry, Malcolm; Lewis, Dan; Baum, Stefi; Beichman, Charles; Doyon, René; Dressler, Alan; Eisenstein, Daniel J.; Ferrarese, Laura; Hodapp, Klaus; Horner, Scott; Jaffe, Daniel T.; Johnstone, Doug; Krist, John; Martin, Peter; McCarthy, Donald W.; Meyer, Michael; Rieke, George H.; Trauger, John; Young, Erick T.

Abstract

The Near Infrared Camera for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is delivering the imagery that astronomers have hoped for ever since JWST was proposed back in the 1990s. In the Commissioning Period that extended from right after launch to early 2022 July, NIRCam has been subjected to a number of performance tests and operational checks. The camera is exceeding prelaunch expectations in virtually all areas, with very few surprises discovered in flight. NIRCam also delivered the imagery needed by the Wavefront Sensing Team for use in aligning the telescope mirror segments.

Additional Information

© 2023. The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP). Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Many people at Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Center contributed to the NIRCam Project. We especially want to thank Alison Nordt, Eric Dixon, Tony Magoncelli, and Liz Osborne for support during commissioning. The development, testing, and commissioning of NIRCam were funded by NASA Contract NAS5-02105. A portion of this research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). D.J. is supported by NRC Canada and by an NSERC Discovery Grant. We also want to acknowledge the contributions of three NIRCam team members who passed away during the development of NIRCam. Chad Engelbracht analyzed much of the detector test data that were used to select the flight parts. John Stauffer devised the original calibration plan for NIRCam. Don Hall provided advice on many issues and detector production in particular. The referee is thanked for helpful suggestions.

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