Conference on Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2008 - Optical, Infrared and Millimeter Marseille, FRANCE, JUN 23-28, 2008, Date: 2008/06/23 - 2008/06/28, Location: FRANCE, Marseille
Space telescopes and instrumentation 2008: optical, infrared, and millimeter, pts 1 and 2
Author:
Keywords:
instruments : far infrared, instruments : space, instruments : photometer, integral field spectrometer, missions : herschel, photoconductor arrays, bolometer arrays, telescope, design, 1st, Science & Technology, Physical Sciences, Technology, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Instruments & Instrumentation, Optics, missions : Herschel, PHOTOCONDUCTOR ARRAYS, BOLOMETER ARRAYS, TELESCOPE, DESIGN, 1ST, 4006 Communications engineering, 4009 Electronics, sensors and digital hardware, 5102 Atomic, molecular and optical physics
Abstract:
The Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) is one of the three science instruments for ESA's far infrared and submillimeter observatory Herschel. It employs two Ge:Ga photoconductor arrays (stressed and unstressed) with 16 x 25 pixels, each, and two filled silicon bolometer arrays with 16 x 32 and 32 x 64 pixels, respectively, to perform imaging line spectroscopy and imaging photometry in the 60 - 210 mu m wavelength band In photometry mode, it will simultaneously image two bands, 60 - 85 mu m or 85 - 125 mu m and 125 - 210 mu m over a field of view of similar to 1.75' x 3.5', with close to Nyquist beam sampling in each band. In spectroscopy mode, it will image a field of similar to 50 '' x 50 '', resolved into 5 x 5 pixels, with an instantaneous spectral coverage of similar to 1500 km/s and a spectral resolution of similar to 175 km/s. In both modes the performance is expected to be not far from background-noise limited, with sensitivities (5 sigma in 1h) of similar to 4 mJy or 3 - 20 x 10(-18)W/m(2), respectively.