Spectrum extraction from detector plane images for the medium-resolution spectrometer of the mid-Infrared Instrument on-board the James Webb Space Telescope.

Abstract

The Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on-board the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) performs mediumresolution spectroscopy in the 5 to 28.5micron wavelength range. In this paper two algorithms are presented that will be used to extract 1D spectra from the 2D absolutely calibrated detector science frames acquired with the Medium-Resolution Spectrometer (MRS) of MIRI. The first spectral extraction algorithm performs standard aperture photometry on point and extended sources. The second algorithm, applicable only to point sources, uses the instrument point spread function (PSF) and the pixel signal variance as a weighting function, to extract the signal from the detector pixels in an optimized way. This extraction is also optimal in the case of faint source observations. The two algorithms are tested on MIRI ground test data and compared. For point sources, the optimal extraction algorithm is found to be more reliable than the aperture extraction algorithm.