The Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph for the James Webb Space Telescope. I. Instrument Overview and In-flight Performance

September 2023 • 2023PASP..135i8001R

Authors • René, Doyon, • Willott, Chris J. • Hutchings, John B. • Sivaramakrishnan, Anand • Albert, Loïc • Lafrenière, David • Rowlands, Neil • Vila, M. Begoña • Martel, André R. • LaMassa, Stephanie • Aldridge, David • Artigau, Étienne • Cameron, Peter • Chayer, Pierre • Cook, Neil J. • Cooper, Rachel A. • Darveau-Bernier, Antoine • Dupuis, Jean • Earnshaw, Colin • Espinoza, Néstor • 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 • Roy, Niladri • Saad, Karl • Sohn, Sangmo Tony • Talens, Geert Jan • Touahri, Driss • Thatte, Deepashri • Taylor, Joanna M. • Vandal, Thomas • Volk, Kevin • Wander, Michel • Warner, Gerald • Zheng, Sheng-Hai • Zhou, Julia • Abraham, Roberto • Beaulieu, Mathilde • Benneke, Björn • Ferrarese, Laura • Jayawardhana, Ray • Johnstone, Doug • Kaltenegger, Lisa • Meyer, Michael R. • Pipher, Judy L. • Rameau, Julien • Rieke, Marcia • Salhi, Salma • Sawicki, Marcin

Abstract • The Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) is the science module of the Canadian-built Fine Guidance Sensor 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 at a resolving power of ~150 between 0.8 and 2.2 μm, (3) single-object cross-dispersed slitless spectroscopy (SOSS) enabling simultaneous wavelength coverage between 0.6 and 2.8 μm at R ~ 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 μm enabling high-contrast (~10^-3 - 10^-4) imaging at angular separations between 70 and 400 mas 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 ~2.5 μm 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 ~10% of the expected noise. The first space-based companion detection of the tight binary star AB Dor AC through AMI was demonstrated.

Links

• PDF http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/acd41b/pdf
• PDF https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/acd41b/pdf
• PREPRINT http://arxiv.org/abs/2306.03277
• ELECTR http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/acd41b