Slow-Scan Observations with the Infrared Camera (IRC) aboard AKARI
Oyabu, Shinki; Yamamura, Issei; Takita, Satoshi; Kawamura, Akiko; Kataza, Hirokazu; Ishihara, Daisuke; Ueno, Munetaka; Ikeda, Norio; Kitamura, Yoshimi
Japan
Abstract
We present the characterization and calibration of the slow-scan observation mode of the Infrared Camera (IRC) aboard AKARI. The IRC Slow-scan observations were operated at the S9W (9μm) and L18W (18μm) bands. We developed a toolkit for data reduction of the IRC Slow-scan observations. We introduced a "self-pointing reconstruction" method to improve the positional accuracy to as good as 1". The sizes of the point spread functions were derived to be ∼6" at the S9W band and ∼7" at the L18W bands in full width at half maximum. Flux calibrations were achieved with observations of 3 and 4 infrared standard stars at the S9W and L18W bands, respectively. The flux uncertainties are estimated to be better than 20% from comparisons with the AKARI IRC PSC and the WISE preliminary catalog.