The Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) onboard the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be the first space-borne Multi-Object Spectrograph (MOS), comprising a quarter of a million individually addressable microshutters to allow simultaneous observation of ∼100 targets. We present the strategy for flat-fielding the NIRSpec MOS, correcting for the combined effects of the telescope and instrument throughput as well as the detector response. With a highly configurable shutter array, a novel approach is required to ensure that flat- field reference observations do not significantly impact telescope efficiency. We envisage a two-step strategy: 1) Creation of a three-dimensional master flat-field reference (two spatial dimensions, one wavelength) from a small set of well-designed calibration data; 2) Correction of any data frame using a two-dimensional flat-field generated on-the-fly, for that specific MOS configuration, from the master.

Date Published: 29 July 2016
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 9904, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2016: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave, 990446 (29 July 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2232150

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9904:
Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2016: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave
Howard A. MacEwen; Giovanni G. Fazio; Makenzie Lystrup; Natalie Batalha; Nicholas Siegler; Edward C. Tong, Editor(s)