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MINDS: The JWST MIRI Mid-INfrared Disk Survey
Henning, Thomas; Waters, L. B. F. M.; Östlin, Göran +43 more
The study of protoplanetary disks has become increasingly important with the Kepler satellite finding that exoplanets are ubiquitous around stars in our galaxy and the discovery of enormous diversity in planetary system architectures and planet properties. High-resolution near-IR and ALMA images show strong evidence for ongoing planet formation in…
High-precision Astrometry and Photometry with the JWST/MIRI Imager
Law, David R.; Hines, Dean C.; Álvarez-Márquez, Javier +8 more
Astrometry is one of the main pillars of astronomy, and one of its oldest branches. Over the years, an increasing number of astrometric works by means of Hubble Space Telescope (HST) data have revolutionized our understanding of various phenomena. With the launch of JWST, it becomes almost instinctive to want to replicate or improve these results …
TEMPLATES: A Robust Outlier Rejection Method for JWST/NIRSpec Integral Field Spectroscopy
Hutchison, Taylor A.; Rigby, Jane R.; Sharon, Keren +14 more
We describe a custom outlier rejection algorithm for JWST/NIRSpec integral field spectroscopy. This method uses a layered sigma clipping approach that adapts clipping thresholds based upon the spatial profile of the science target. We find that this algorithm produces a robust outlier rejection while simultaneously preserving the signal of the sci…
An Algorithm to Mitigate Charge Migration Effects in Data from the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph on the James Webb Space Telescope
Volk, Kevin; Bushouse, Howard; Goudfrooij, Paul +1 more
We present an algorithm that mitigates the effects of charge migration due to the "brighter-fatter effect" (BFE) that occurs for highly illuminated stars in the Teledyne HAWAII-2RG detectors used in the NIRCam, NIRISS, and NIRSpec science instruments aboard the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The impact of this effect is most significant for ph…
JWST's PEARLS: Improved Flux Calibration for NIRCam
Grogin, Norman A.; Hathi, Nimish P.; Koekemoer, Anton M. +23 more
The Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science, a James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) GTO program, obtained a set of unique NIRCam observations that have enabled us to significantly improve the default photometric calibration across both NIRCam modules. The observations consisted of three epochs of 4-band (F150W, F200W, F356W, an…
Toward Exoplanet Transit Spectroscopy Using JWST/MIRI's Medium Resolution Spectrometer
Deming, Drake; Lustig-Yaeger, Jacob; Fu, Guangwei +9 more
The Mid-Infrared Instrument Medium Resolution Spectrometer (the MRS) on JWST has potentially important advantages for transit and eclipse spectroscopy of exoplanets, including lack of saturation for bright host stars, wavelength span to longward of 20 µm, and JWST's highest spectral resolving power. We here test the performance of the MRS for time…
Likelihood-based Jump Detection and Cosmic Ray Rejection for Detectors Read Out Up-the-ramp
Brandt, Timothy D.
This paper implements likelihood-based jump detection for detectors read out up-the-ramp, using the entire set of reads to compute likelihoods. The approach compares the χ 2 value of a fit with and without a jump for every possible jump location. I show that this approach can be substantially more sensitive than one that only uses the d…
Database Design for SpExoDisks: A Database and Web Portal for Spectra of Exoplanet-forming Disks
Banzatti, Andrea; Hinkel, Natalie R.; Wheeler, Caleb H.
Data access—or the availability of new and archival data for use by the larger community—is key for scientific advancement. How data is presented, searched, and formatted determines accessibility and it can be difficult to find a solution that fits the needs of a given subdiscipline. We present a generalized roadmap for developing a specialty astr…
Enhancing Exoplanet Ephemerides by Leveraging Professional and Citizen Science Data: A Test Case with WASP-77 A b
Dalba, Paul A.; Zellem, Robert T.; Evans, Phil +42 more
We present an updated ephemeris, and physical parameters, for the exoplanet WASP-77 A b. In this effort, we combine 64 ground- and space-based transit observations, 6 space-based eclipse observations, and 32 radial velocity observations to produce this target's most precise orbital solution to date aiding in the planning of James Webb Space Telesc…
Optimal Fitting and Debiasing for Detectors Read Out Up-the-Ramp
Brandt, Timothy D.
This paper derives the optimal fit to a pixel's count rate in the case of an ideal detector read out nondestructively in the presence of both read and photon noise. The approach is general for any readout scheme, provides closed-form expressions for all quantities, and has a computational cost that is linear in the number of resultants (groups of …