The Science Performance of JWST as Characterized in Commissioning

By J. Rigby, M. Perrin, M. McElwain, R. Kimble, S. Friedman, M. Lallo, R. Doyon, L. Feinberg, P. Ferruit, A. Glasse and 615 more. Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2022

312 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper characterizes the actual science performance of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as determined from the six month commissioning period. We summarize the performance of the spacecraft, telescope, science instruments, and ground system, with an emphasis on differences from pre-launch expectations. Commissioning has made clear that JWST is fully capable of achieving the discoveries for which it was built. Moreover, almost across the board, the science performance of JWST is better than expected; in most cases, JWST will go deeper faster than expected. The telescope and instrument suite have demonstrated the sensitivity, stability, image quality, and spectral range that are necessary to transform our understanding of the cosmos through observations spanning from near-earth asteroids to the most distant galaxies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/53bd51ad71d532fcad9e436561b4c99470f83e21

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. L. Hernquist
2. P. Hopkins
3. M. Franx
4. P. V. van Dokkum
5. Brant Robertson
6. G. Illingworth
7. Richard S. Ellis
8. R. Bouwens

In Instrumentation

1. M. Franx
2. G. Illingworth
3. P. V. van Dokkum
4. R. Bouwens
5. Richard S. Ellis
6. Brant Robertson
7. L. Hernquist
8. P. Hopkins

Citations in the corpus

• JADES Initial Data Release for the Hubble Ultra Deep Field: Revealing the Faint Infrared Sky with Deep JWST NIRCam Imaging (2023, methodology): “Following Stage 2, we perform several custom corrections in order to account for several features in the NIRCam images ( Rigby et al. 2023 ) , including the 1 / f noise ( Schlawin et al. 2020 ) , scattered-light effects 29 ( “ wisps ” and “ claws ” ) , and the large-scale background.”
• The James Webb Space Telescope Mission (2023, background): “…Instrument (MIRI; Wright et al. 2023, this issue); the telescope (McElwain et al. 2023, this issue); the observatory (Menzel et al. 2023, this issue); the scientific performance (Rigby et al. 2023a, this issue); and the brightness of the sky and stray light (Rigby et al. 2023b, this issue).”
• A Census of Photometrically Selected Little Red Dots at 4 < z < 9 in JWST Blank Fields (2024, methodology): “Compared to the standard pipeline, we incorporate additional corrections to account for cosmic rays and stray light (see e.g., Bradley et al. 2023), 1/f noise, detector level artifacts (“wisps” and “snowballs”) and bias in individual exposures (see e.g., Rigby et al. 2023).”