How the NIRCam Flux Calibration Is Improving

September 9, 2022

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Work is ongoing to improve the flux calibration of the NIRCam instrument by STScI, as well as by teams around the world. For instance, the Resolved Stellar Populations Early Release Science team (PID 1334) used NIRCam observations of the nearby globular cluster M92 to revise the relative flux calibration between different detectors by as much as ~20%. In a new Research Note, they offer revised zero-point offsets for a subset of NIRCam filters, and a general overview of the methods applied.

The NIRCam team is currently applying similar techniques to the remaining NIRCam filters. The expectation is that that these will be further refined, along with an improvement in absolute flux calibration, by new calibration observations during the course of Cycle 1 (see Gordon et al. (2022) for a description of the Cycle 1 absolute flux calibration plan).

Stay tuned for updates to the NIRCam pipeline reference files in the coming weeks that include these revisions. For the most up-to-date information, please subscribe to instrument-specific email notifications about reference files. 

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