Simulations of Cosmic RAYs in NIRSpec darks

 

Once JWST is in space, NIRSpec exposures will be affected by the cosmic ray(CR) fluence at the JWST orbit and our ability to detect CR hits and to mitigate their effect.

We have simulated the effect of CRs on NIRSpec detectors by injecting realistic CR events onto dark exposures that were acquired during the JWST cryo-vacuum test campaign undertaken at Johnson Space Flight Center. We used these simulations to  assess the performance of the method we have implemented to detect the hits in the exposure integration cubes and reject the affected data points. 

Details about this work in this PASP article.

Browse and download examples of the data from our FTP server following the link below (anonymous login, please use a secure FTP client)

ftp.cosmos.esa.int/JWST_NIRSpec_Simulations/Cosmic_Rays_Darks