MIRI Performance

The performance of JWST's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) is predicted by a model that uses a number of parameters derived from laboratory measurements.

JWST performance

Observatory and instrument performance based on commissioning and other in-flight data are still being analyzed. Updates to JDox performance articles will be made as vetted results become available.

Check the "Latest Updates" information at the bottom of each article to track these updates.

The pre-flight performance of MIRI has been studied in detail by Glasse et al. (2015) and Boccaletti et al. (2015). These studies bring together performance metrics from laboratory testing with a sensitivity model formulated by Swinyard et al. (2004). The performance is being updated with in-flight measurements.

These models, modified by in-flight measurements have been adapted by the Exposure Time Calculator (ETC)Operational overheads (Gordon et al. 2014), including target acquisition, small angle maneuvers to allow efficient background subtraction, time spent moving MIRI mechanisms, or taking calibration observations are incorporated and included in the final time calculated by the Astronomer's Proposal Tool (APT)

Users should ultimately use the ETC for all sensitivity calculations.

Available JWST Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) performance articles are listed below:

More articles will be released in the near future. 



References

Boccaletti, A. et al. 2015, PASP, 127, 633
The Mid-Infrared Instrument for the James Webb Space Telescope, V: Predicted Performance of the MIRI Coronagraphs

Glasse, A. et al., 2015, PASP, 127, 686
The Mid-Infrared Instrument for the James Webb Space Telescope, IX: Predicted Sensitivit

Gordon, K. D. et al., 2014, PASP, 127, 696
The Mid-Infrared Instrument for the James Webb Space Telescope, X: Operations and Data Reduction

Swinyard B. M., et al., 2004, Proc. SPIE, 5487, 785
Sensitivity estimates for the mid-infrared instrument (MIRI) on the JWST




Latest updates
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    Updated text to include notes about flight performance
Originally published