NIRISS Instrumentation

The JWST Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrumentation includes internal optical components, filters, grisms, and an aperture mask to support its 4 observing modes

  • Transfer optics:
    • a pick-off mirror (POM), which also includes the focus mechanism, 
    • a 3-mirror assembly (TMA) to collimate the incoming beam, and 
    • a camera TMA to focus light on the detector.
  • Pupil and filter wheels as a dual-wheel assembly:
    • filters—12 bandpass filters (7 wideband and 5 medium-band) distributed equally between the pupil and filter wheel;
    • GR150C and GR150R—a pair of grisms in the filter wheel that operate between 0.8 and 2.2 μm with R ≈ 150. These grisms are identical but oriented to disperse in orthogonal directions on the detector;
    • GR700XD—a grism in the pupil wheel that operates between 0.6 and 2.8 μm with R ≈ 700, which is optimized for applications that require high spectro-photometric precision; and
    • a non-redundant aperture mask (NRM) in the pupil wheel that enables high spatial resolution imaging with medium contrast.
  • Detector: a single Hawaii 2RG sensor chip array with 2048 × 2048 pixels. Each pixel is 18 × 18 μm and provides a plate scale of 0.0653"/pixel × 0.0658"/pixel.


The full list of NIRISS instrumentation articles:




Latest updates
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    Updated pixel scale to measurements from in-flight observations
Originally published