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| WFC3/IR | |
|---|---|
| Name | Wide Field Camera 3 Infrared Channel |
| Operator | National Aeronautics and Space Administration / Space Telescope Science Institute |
| Launched | 2009 |
| Location | Low Earth Orbit |
| Telescope type | Space telescope instrument |
| Wavelength | Near-infrared |
| Detectors | HgCdTe arrays |
| Resolution | 0.13 arcsec/pixel (approx.) |
WFC3/IR
The Wide Field Camera 3 infrared channel is the near-infrared imaging and slitless spectroscopy module installed on the Hubble Space Telescope during the STS-125 servicing mission, operated by the Space Telescope Science Institute under contract to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It provides wide-field, high-sensitivity observations across the 0.8–1.7 μm range, enabling programs led by teams at institutions such as University of Arizona, California Institute of Technology, Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, European Space Agency partners, and international consortia. The instrument supports broad and narrow band imaging, grism spectroscopy, and time-domain studies that have been incorporated into large legacy surveys coordinated with facilities like the Spitzer Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, and ground observatories including the Very Large Telescope and Keck Observatory.
The channel was developed by a collaboration including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Ball Aerospace, and the Goddard Space Flight Center, built to complement the Wide Field Camera 3 ultraviolet-visible channel with infrared capability after proposals reviewed by panels administered by the Space Telescope Science Institute and the National Research Council. It enables investigations ranging from deep-field extragalactic surveys coordinated with the CANDELS program and the Hubble Ultra Deep Field teams to resolved stellar population work in systems like Andromeda and Magellanic Clouds. Principal science drivers included studies of high-redshift galaxy formation post-reionization linked to targets from the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey and gravitational lensing analyses involving clusters such as Abell 1689 and MACS J1149.5+2223.
The optical train shares a common fore-optics assembly and filter wheel architecture with design oversight by Ball Aerospace and optical testing by Marshall Space Flight Center. The channel includes a set of selectable filters and two grisms mounted in a cryogenically cooled assembly designed to operate inside the Hubble Space Telescope focal plane. The system provides a field of view approximately 136 × 123 arcseconds with a plate scale matched to diffraction limits set by the Hubble Space Telescope primary mirror and wavefront control performed during servicing missions such as STS-125. Filter sets include broad bands corresponding to standard astrophysical passbands used by teams at University of California, Berkeley, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, and other centers to compare stellar population synthesis models.
The infrared channel uses a 1024 × 1024 HgCdTe detector array developed with heritage from devices characterized at Goddard Space Flight Center and calibrated using facilities at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Detector properties—quantum efficiency, dark current, read noise—were measured against expectations from programs involving the European Southern Observatory and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Typical in-flight performance yields low dark current and effective readout schemes such as MULTIACCUM to mitigate cosmic ray effects documented also in work from the Space Telescope Science Institute detector specialists. The pixel sampling is optimized for near-Nyquist coverage at wavelengths near the filter set midpoints, benefiting comparative studies conducted by teams at Princeton University and Yale University.
Calibration pipelines were developed by the Space Telescope Science Institute instrument teams, incorporating flats, darks, non-linearity corrections, and ramp fitting algorithms similar to methods used by the James Webb Space Telescope detector teams. Reference files and calibration programs are maintained in coordination with institutions including STScI partners at European Space Agency member states and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. Data reduction recipes used by legacy survey teams such as CANDELS and programs led from University of California, Santa Cruz include additional steps for background subtraction, persistence correction, and astrometric alignment against catalogs produced by projects like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Two Micron All-Sky Survey.
The channel enabled flagship programs that produced high-impact results: constraints on the luminosity function of galaxies at z>6 used by teams from Harvard University and Princeton University; discovery and follow-up of supernovae in cosmological surveys associated with groups at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Santa Barbara; resolved star formation histories in Local Group dwarfs studied by researchers at University of Washington and University of Michigan; and detailed lensing reconstructions in clusters observed by collaborations including California Institute of Technology and MIT. It contributed to measurements of stellar mass assembly tied to datasets from Spitzer Space Telescope and kinematic follow-ups on Keck Observatory and VLT.
Installed during the final servicing mission (STS-125), the infrared channel has operated continuously in low Earth orbit with command and scheduling managed by the Space Telescope Science Institute Mission Operations. Periodic anneals and temperature management procedures developed by teams at Goddard Space Flight Center and JPL maintain detector health, while long-term monitoring by calibration scientists at STScI and collaborators at European Space Agency laboratories track degradation metrics. Synergistic observing campaigns coordinated with Chandra X-ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope have required cross-mission scheduling overseen by NASA and partner agencies.
Limitations include persistence effects in HgCdTe arrays noted in reports from Goddard Space Flight Center and saturation constraints that affect bright-source programs planned by investigators at Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Space Telescope Science Institute. Anomalies such as occasional hot pixels, amplifier-specific behavior, and radiation hits have been mitigated by calibration updates issued by STScI and engineering assessments from Ball Aerospace and JPL. The channel’s wavelength cutoff and field of view impose complementarities and trade-offs with instruments on James Webb Space Telescope and ground-based near-infrared integral-field units at facilities like Keck Observatory and VLT.