The Infrared Camera (IRC) for AKARI - Design and Imaging Performance
Abstract
The Infrared Camera (IRC) is one of two focal-plane instruments on the AKARI satellite. It is designed for wide-field deep imaging and low-resolution spectroscopy in the near- to mid-infrared (1.8--26.5um) in the pointed observation mode of AKARI. IRC is also operated in the survey mode to make an all-sky survey at 9 and 18um. It comprises three channels. The NIR channel (1.8--5.5um) employs a 512 x 412 InSb array, whereas both the MIR-S (4.6--13.4um) and MIR-L (12.6--26.5um) channels use 256 x 256 Si:As impurity band conduction arrays. Each of the three channels has a field-of-view of about 10' x 10' and are operated simultaneously. The NIR and MIR-S share the same field-of-view by virtue of a beam splitter. The MIR-L observes the sky about $25' away from the NIR/MIR-S field-of-view. IRC gives us deep insights into the formation and evolution of galaxies, the evolution of planetary disks, the process of star-formation, the properties of interstellar matter under various physical conditions, and the nature and evolution of solar system objects. The in-flight performance of IRC has been confirmed to be in agreement with the pre-flight expectation. This paper summarizes the design and the in-flight operation and imaging performance of IRC.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0705.4144,
title = {The Infrared Camera (IRC) for AKARI - Design and Imaging Performance},
author = {T. Onaka and H. Matsuhara and T. Wada and N. Fujishiro and H. Fujiwara and M. Ishigaki and D. Ishihara and Y. Ita and H. Kataza and W. Kim and T. Matsumoto and H. Murakami and Y. Ohyama and S. Oyabu and I. Sakon and T. Tanabe and T. Takagi and K. Uemizu and M. Ueno and F. Usui and H. Watarai and M. Cohen and K. Enya and T. Ootsubo and C. P. Pearson and N. Takeyama and T. Yamamuro and Y. Ikeda},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0705.4144},
year = {2015}
}