Adv.Space Res 30, pp.2111 (2002)
T. Wada, S. Fujita, H. Kataza, W. Kim, I.Maeda, H. Matsuhara, T. Matsumoto, H. Murakami, K. Uemizu, H.Watarai, The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science(ISAS) D.Ishihara, T. Negishi, T. Onaka, T. Ootsubo, N. Takeyama,Department of Astronomy, University of Tokyo M. Ueno, Department of Earth Science and Astronomy, University of Tokyo
The design and the current development status of the Infrared Camera (IRC) onboard ASTRO-F is described.
The IRC is designed for wide field imaging and slit-less spectroscopic observations at near- and mid-infrared wavelengths.
The IRC consists of three channels, NIR, MIR-S and MIR-L, which cover wavelengths of 2-5, 5-12 and 12-26 micron, respectively.
All of them consist of refractive optics. State-of-the-art large format array detectors are placed at the focal plane.
Each channel has 10x10 arcmin wide field-of-view with diffraction-limited spatial resolution of 70 cm aperture of ASTRO-F telescope
at wavelengths over 5 micron. We plan to have more than 7000 pointing observations dedicated for the IRC.
The observational time of each pointing is limited to 500 seconds because of its low earth sun-synchronous polar orbit.
The 5 sigma sensitivity of one pointing observation is estimated to be 2, 30 and 120 micro-Jy at 5, 9, 20 micron bands,
respectively. Fabrication of the prototype model has been completed, and the performance tests are underway.
(C)2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd on behalf of COSPAR.
