NIRCam

NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) is an instrument aboard the James Webb Space Telescope.

It has two major tasks, as an imager from 0.6 to 5 μm wavelength, and as a wavefront sensor to keep the 18-section mirrors functioning as one.

[1][2] The camera has a field of view of 2.2×2.2 arcminutes with an angular resolution of 0.07 arcseconds at 2 μm.

[2] NIRCam is housed in the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM), to which it is attached by struts.

[3] The Focal Plane Electronics operated at 290 K.[3] NIRCam should be able to observe objects as faint as magnitude +29 with a 10,000-second exposure (about 2.8 hours).

[4] It can observe in two fields of view, and either side can do imaging, or from the capabilities of the wave-front sensing equipment, spectroscopy.

[12] The builders of NIRCam are the University of Arizona, company Lockheed Martin, and Teledyne Technologies, in cooperation with the U.S. Space agency, NASA.

[11] Teledyne Technologies designed and manufactured the ten mercury-cadmium-telluride (HgCdTe) detector arrays.