NICMOS: lessons learned for future space infrared instrumentation

摘要

Temperature variations in the NICMOS detectors arise from a variety of thermal sources. These thermal variations lead to several image artifacts which must be removed before making quantitative scientific measurements from NICMOS data. Future instruments would do well to minimize sources of thermal instabilities in their detectors. A related problem is the inability to directly measure detector temperature from bias due to the instability of the low-voltage power supply in NICMOS. Identifying ways to directly monitor detector temperatures would be an important benefit for future missions.