This is a NIRSpec MOS deep extragalactic survey use case. The APT step-by-step instructions are provided in detail here.

MOS design considerations and APT workflow

This article describes how to implement the Deep Extragalactic Survey science use case observations in APT version 2020.1. The MSA planning tool (MPT) will be used. This article focuses on the available design choices, and the rationale for selecting from the many available options. It will walk through Catalog ingest and each section of the MPT (Planner, Plans) to create example observations, and in the end, add parallel NIRCam imaging. Choices and tradeoffs were made given pre-flight state of knowledge of the instrument performance.

Concept behind the MPT Plans

Through experimentation with the micro-shutter assembly (MSA) planning tool (MPT), and following the procedures outlined in the MOS science example main article, it was determined that four NIRSpec MOS pointings will be required to observe around 200 galaxies at 2 < z < 6.

Determining MSA pointings when parallel observations are needed

You'll want the NIRCam parallel observations to cover a semi-regular area on the sky (e.g., rectangle). This severely restricts the location of the MSA pointings. To obtain a NIRCam mosaic, MSA points must also have a well-defined mosaic. Therefore, in this use case, restrict the MSA pointings to specific regions on the sky.

Choose an area on the sky of 8 × 8 arcminutes, which corresponds to roughly 2 × 2 MSA footprints. In order to define a sample of galaxies in this area, take the GOODS-S Catalog from Momcheva et al. (2016), and restrict it to a circular region around the coordinates of the center of the pointing RA 03:32:33.00, DEC -27:48:47.0. A 5.5 arcminute radius around this pointing gives a region that will circumscribe an 8 × 8 arcminute square. By using this circular region, which is somewhat larger than the area selected, you'll ensure that the catalog contains sources that will fill the MSA for any possible aperture position angle that is assigned. In total, this sub-region contains 27,964 objects. 

In order to make efficient use of the MOS, while also carrying out a cohesive science investigation, define Primary and Filler candidates from the Catalog. For Primary candidates, choose galaxies with photometric redshifts above 5, where NIRSpec can access both Hα and [CIII], CIII] (in bands 3 and 1, respectively). For Filler candidates, use galaxies with photometric redshifts at 2 < z < 5. In this use case, lower-redshift galaxies are well suited as Filler targets, since they will typically be brighter than Primary targets. While the MSA planning tool ensures that Primary targets will be observed at all nods and dithers, Filler targets may be observed in only a subset, resulting in reduced sensitivity. 

Catalogs

As stated in the science goals, you'll use the GOODS-S Catalog from Momcheva et al. (2016), which is publicly available. Instructions for preparing and ingesting a Catalog for use in MPT can be found in the MPT Catalogs article. In brief, when a Catalog is uploaded as an MSA Catalog Target in APT, some Catalog parameters must be specified. Enter an astrometric accuracy of 10 mas, since the Catalog was constructed from HST imaging which typically has this accuracy. Also set Pre-Imaging Availability to Not Required, since pre-imaging in this case refers to NIRCam pre-imaging and you'll have HST imaging with the requisite accuracy. The reference position type and coordinates need not be edited for normal use cases such as this example. Finally, following the approach outlined in the observing strategy, define Primary and Filler candidate lists with photometric redshifts at 5 < z < 6  (542 galaxies) and 2 < z < 5 (7559 galaxies).  

Running the MPT Planner

The Planner tab in MPT contains many options for specifying how MSA configurations are designed. The MPT Planner article gives instructions for how to complete this section. For this use case, make the following choices:

• Primary and Filler Candidate Lists: Here, select the candidate lists that were defined on the MSA Catalog Target.
  
  

• Aperture PA (APA): This parameter describes the position angle of the MSA, and consequently, the position angles of the slitlets in the configuration. For a given target, position angles are constrained by when the field is visible to JWST. In the science article, the JWST General Target Visibility Tool (GTVT) was used to find reasonable APAs, and an APA of 60° was selected.

• Slitlet Length: Here, you have the option to choose whether the slitlets are 1, 2, 3, or 5 shutters in length. Each shutter is 0.27” × 0.53” including the bar). While longer slitlets could offer more pixels for background subtraction, they will also reduce the number of slits that can fit in an MSA configuration, thereby decreasing multiplexing. Therefore, in this use case, select a 3 Shutter Slitlet. The source will occupy one shutter and the other two shutters will be used for background.
  
  

• Source Centering Constraint: Since the MSA is a fixed grid, sources cannot be perfectly centered in their respective shutters. Hence, the source centering constraint sets a threshold for how off-center sources can be. The most lenient option, Unconstrained will allow the centers of the observed galaxies to fall behind the bars that separate the MSA shutters. While this option may be reasonable for large galaxies, it will also require significant corrections for slit-losses. Alternatively, the most stringent option, Tightly Constrained, would require the smallest slit loss corrections, but it would ultimately reduce multiplexing, especially for the somewhat smaller set of primary sources. While the pipeline correction for slit-losses on point sources is straightforward, for galaxies it is not applied. It is much more uncertain and must be applied by the user. As a compromise between slit-loss corrections and multiplexing efficiency, choose Midpoint as the source centering constraint. The precise definitions of the available source centering constraints are given in the NIRSpec MPT - Planner article. 
  
  

• Dithering: An MSA observation has options for nods and dithers, as described in NIRSpec MOS Dither and Nod Patterns. Choose to nod, taking an exposure of the galaxies in each shutter of their 3 Shutter Slitlet.  Since nod positions can serve as dithers, choose not to add any more dithers. This choice increases efficiency in two ways. First, you do not have to reconfigure the MSA, saving 90 s of overhead. Second, you do not suffer multiplexing losses, due to the requirement that the sources be observable in two configurations, rather than one. The down-side to this choice is that the spectra will have a wavelength gap, due to NIRSpec’s chip gap. You'll have to accept this compromise. Note that adding a 20” Fixed Dither to cover the chip gap would still result in half the exposure time, and a non-uniform signal-to-noise, over certain wavelengths. For users concerned about wavelength coverage, the MSA Target Info export file contains the wavelength cutoffs for each slitlet on the MSA. 
  
  

• Gratings/Filters: Choose the grating-filter combinations you wish to observe as specified in the science goals. Select G140M/F100LP, G235M/F170LP and G395M/F290LP. Lastly, the option to select Multiple Sources per Row will increase multiplexing by allowing spectral overlap. However, since you do not want the spectra to be contaminated, do not check this box.
  
  

• Search Grid: Here, define the area over which MPT will search to optimize the placement of sources in MSA shutters. Choose 4 specific NIRSpec pointings that will create a uniform survey area in both NIRSpec and the NIRCam parallels. For each one, create a separate MPT Plan, containing a single pointing of the MSA. The central positions of these search grids are given in Table 1.  

   

Table 1.  Four pointing positions

Use a relatively small search height and width (3”) to keep the pointings close to the central positions, but still allow some optimization of the spectroscopic sample. Lastly, specify a “Search Step Size” of 0.1 arcsec. This small step size results in 961 pointings that will be tested, in order to find the one with the largest number of sources. A search step size smaller than the width of the shutter can improve multiplexing as is explained in NIRSpec MPT - Parameter Space.  

• Parameters:  A few options remain before you can create the MPT Plans.  

1. The Use Weights checkbox will allow target weights to be used in determining the most optimal MSA configurations. This parameter is especially useful for cases where users have Primary candidates with different priorities. For simplicity, do not use weights in this use case.
2. The Enable Monte Carlo checkbox will tell MPT to shuffle the input Catalog, by a number of times specified in the box. This feature is useful, because MPT fills the MSA configuration using the ordering of sources in the Catalog. If Enable Monte Carlo is selected, and weights are present in the Catalog, MPT will shuffle the Catalog and then sort by the weights. This functionality is desirable for shuffling within some category of sources that have the same weight.   For simplicity, do not use Monte Carlo shuffling in this example, so do not check the box for Enable Monte Carlo.
3. The option to Allow sources in areas affected by stuck open shutters implies that, when selected, the MPT will ignore the stuck open shutters during planning. That is, MSA sources may be positioned in these shutters, or in the area that is normally masked around them. This may help with multiplexing, but since you are looking at faint sources, you would like to avoid any additional contamination of the source spectra. You will plan around these stuck open shutters and leave the checkbox unchecked.
4. The Number of configurations is one, because you are making a separate Plan for each pointing, and you do not have any dithers that require a second configuration at a nearby pointing. The default in this box is the minimum number needed to complete the Plan. The behavior for a null entry is to make however many configurations required to observe all of the Primary sources. This approach can take quite some time to calculate and will likely generate an unreasonable number of MSA configurations.
5. Lastly, name the plan GOODS-S_APA_60_pointing1, and click the Generate Plan button. After completing this plan, change the Plan name and coordinates following Table 1, and make three more plans, using the same parameters that were outlined above.

 

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Examining the plans and creating observations

After making the four plans, you can examine them in the Plans tab of MPT. Detailed instructions on how to examine Plans are given in the NIRSpec MPT - Plans article. Before creating an observation, you can examine all four Plans together by selecting all of them in the Plan Selection area. Having all of the configurations and pointings selected together allows you to also create a single observation from them, which you do using the “Create Observation” button. 

Overall, this observation created by concatenating the plans contains 79 Primary sources and 120 Filler sources. In this case, the Filler sources are observed in all of the nods; this is likely a consequence of the high space density of objects in the Catalog, and the fact that you only use a single configuration, with no dithers. As mentioned above, users are encouraged to compare the multiplexing results at multiple viable position angles, in order to assure that the science goals can be met at the position angle that will be assigned by STScI in the long range plan. Name the resulting observation “GOODS-S-4point”. The benefit of making a single observation from the Plans is that you'll ensure that the four pointings will be executed at the same position angle, preserving the 2 × 2 pseudo-mosaic that you have created. In some cases, this methodology can save overhead by reducing the number of required visits (and target acquisitions).

Exposure durations in the observation template 

After creating the observation, you need to fill out the exposure duration parameters for the exposures. Define the exposure durations by entering the numbers that were determined during the ETC study. The first row in the exposure table, for G140M/F100LP, will be used twice per configuration in the bottom table. This strategy obtains the desired 10 integrations per nod, while avoiding exposure times that are longer than 10,000 s (the maximum exposure time allowed by JWST). Also select Autocals  =  None; this approach will use archived flat fields and wavelength calibrations from commissioning, rather than observing new (contemporaneous) calibrations. At present, the NIRSpec team does not recommend Autocals. The last two columns show the Total (number of) Integrations, and the Total Exposure Time in each configuration. In this case the number of integrations is 15 or 3: the number of integrations per nod, times the number of nods.

Examining the observations 

You can now examine the observation. Make sure the observation is selected in the tree editor. The following points are worth understanding:

1. You will see that the observations are broken into four visits. This result is expected, since the four pointings are separated by distances greater than the visit splitting distance (40” for GOODS-S). Each will require a separate guide star and MSA target acquisition.
   
   
2. The observation template allows you to add coordinated parallels by checking the coordinated parallels box. Choose this option, and a pull-down menu appears. Select the option NIRSpec MOS-NIRCam Imaging. This selection causes a tab to appear below for defining the NIRCam parallels. The procedure for adding these images are described below.
   
   
3. You'll see that the observations sum to 201,360 s (55.93 hours) of science time, and 262,196 s (72.83 hours) clock time when overheads are included. The exact timing in APT results can evolve with time, as STScI improves the timing model. If you are using the latest release of APT, these numbers may be slightly different.
   
   
4. The pre-image availability should say not required, since you are using a Catalog based on HST images, and you therefore do not need to take NIRCam pre-imaging.
   
   
5. MSATA (MSA target acquisition) should be selected as the TA Method, in order to appropriately model the observing overheads. No further steps are required to define TA at the proposal stage. Tools and documentation will be forthcoming to help plan TA for accepted proposals.
   
   
6. The Science Parameters box shows a list of exposures, as shown in Figure 1. Since you have selected NIRCam parallels, a pull-down menu labeled Dither Type appears. The options specify a set of “compromise dithers” to help sample the NIRCam PSF. This is described below, where you will define the NIRCam parallel exposures. 
   
   
7. The final box in the template, Confirmation Images, allows the user to define NIRSpec images to be taken after target acquisition. These images, taken through a configured MSA, can be useful for verifying that the desired sources are in the slitlets. At present, confirmation images cannot be used when coordinated parallels are in place. Hence, you'll see that the confirmation image pull-down menu is greyed out. In the future, it may be possible to obtain confirmation images for observations that include coordinated parallels. Additional information on confirmation images is in the NIRSpec MOS Operations - Confirmation Images article. 
   
   
8. Since this use-case presents a “proposal” rather than a flight-ready program update, and the MOS observations will be flagged in APT for an angle assignment, the program will not execute until STScI assigns an aperture position angle and the users re-plan their MOS observations to that value.

 

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NIRCam parallels

To define the NIRCam parallel imaging, navigate to the NIRCam imaging tab on the NIRSpec observation, which was created when you selected coordinated parallels (as described above). A thorough description of NIRCam imaging is available in the NIRCam APT documentation and use cases, noting that the same considerations apply here. However, the following key points are noted for planning NIRCam parallels with NIRSpec observations:  

1. The exposure table for NIRCam must have the same number of rows as NIRSpec, 16 in this use case. The NIRSpec observations have four rows at each of the four pointings: 2 for G140M/F100LP (recall, a single exposure was longer than 10,000 s), 1 for G235M/F170LP, and 1 for G395M/F290LP. Therefore, you'll add 16 NIRCam exposure specifications. Each of these 16 will have 3 dithers, corresponding to the 3 NIRSpec nod points that were specified above.  
   
   
2. Each NIRCam exposure must be specified to fit within the NIRSpec exposures. APT will give errors if the exposures are too long, but will not provide a warning if the NIRCam exposures are substantially shorter than the available parallel slot. An easy strategy is to increase the NIRCam exposure times just until the error appears, and then reduce it slightly to make the error disappear. For this use case, add exposures in several broad bands, placing the bluer bands of NIRCam in parallel with the longer G140M/F100LP observations. Deeper blue imaging is often required for finding very high-redshift galaxies, so this approach is probably close to some use cases. If this non-uniformity is undesirable, the longer NIRSpec exposures could be broken into multiple shorter exposures when creating the observation in MPT. However, this strategy would result in extra overheads for exposure setup, and increased read noise if the number of groups is reduced.

The NIRCam observations will be dithered following the NIRSpec observations. NIRSpec is doing the “driving.”  In this case, you have specified 3 in-shutter nods. Since NIRSpec’s aperture position angle (APA) is not aligned with NIRCam’s, the nods will yield sub-pixel dithers that can help with drizzling the undersampled (at short wavelengths) NIRCam PSF. However, an option for further dithering, optimized for NIRCam, is available.  When you specified that NIRCam parallels should be added to the template, a pull-down menu to specify these dithers appeared on the NIRSpec Multi-Object Spectroscopy tab of the observation. The sizes of these “compromise dithers” are listed in the article on NIRSpec MOS Dither and Nod Patterns. These small shifts will move spectroscopic targets by a small amount along the slitlets. They are defined along the axes of the NIRSpec slitlets, and are small enough so that NIRSpec targets are not significantly moved out of their slitlets. In this use case, for simplicity, do not add extra compromise dithers. Note that adding them, at this stage, will double or triple the total exposure times in the NIRSpec observations. Therefore, you would need to decrease the total desired exposure time of the NIRSpec exposures correspondingly if the compromise dithers are to be added.

Finally, with NIRSpec MOS + NIRCam parallels, Data Volume considerations are a concern. Therefore, choose the DEEP8 NIRCam detector readout pattern, which produces the lowest data volume. Each visit in this program uses 41 Gb in about an 18 hour period, which is just under the recommended limit.  

 

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Visualizing the observations

Use Aladin to visualize the NIRSpec and NIRCam observations, and the results are shown in Figure 2. From MPT’s Plans tab, click the “Send to Aladin” button to over-plot red diamonds on all of the targets that will be observed with NIRSpec. 

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Visit Planner

Before submitting the proposal, run the Visit Planner in the toolbar of APT to ensure that the observations can be scheduled. More details on the Visit Planner can be found in APT Visit Planner. Figure 3 shows that the observations in this use case can be scheduled in two windows, approximately 3 months each, over the course of the year.

Momcheva, I. G., et al. 2016, ApJS, Vol. 225, 2, 27
The 3D-HST Survey: Hubble Space Telescope WFC3/G141 Grism Spectra, Redshifts, and Emission Line Measurements for ~100,000 Galaxies

 

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