The Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph for the James Webb Space Telescope -- II. Wide Field Slitless Spectroscopy

Abstract

We present the wide field slitless spectroscopy mode of the NIRISS instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope. This mode employs two orthogonal low-resolution (resolving power $\approx 150$) grisms in combination with a set of six blocking filters in the wavelength range 0.8 to $2.3\mu$m to provide a spectrum of almost every source across the field-of-view. When combined with the low background, high sensitivity and high spatial resolution afforded by the telescope, this mode will enable unprecedented studies of the structure and evolution of distant galaxies. We describe the performance of the as-built hardware relevant to this mode and expected imaging and spectroscopic sensitivity. We discuss operational and calibration procedures to obtain the highest quality data. As examples of the observing mode usage, we present details of two planned Guaranteed Time Observations programs: The Canadian NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey (CANUCS) and The NIRISS Survey for Young Brown Dwarfs and Rogue Planets.

19 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in PASP

References in corpus (15)

• New evolutionary models for pre-main sequence and main sequence low-mass stars down to the hydrogen-burning limit
• Simba: Cosmological Simulations with Black Hole Growth and Feedback
• Constraining the Low-Mass Slope of the Star Formation Sequence at 0.5<z<2.5
• The Star Formation Main Sequence in the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields
• lenstronomy II: A gravitational lensing software ecosystem
• Hubble Space Telescope Spectroscopy of Brown Dwarfs Discovered with the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer
• Evidence for a Turnover in the IMF of Low Mass Stars and Sub-stellar Objects: Analysis from an Ensemble of Young Clusters
• New brown dwarfs in Upper Sco using UKIDSS Galactic Cluster Survey science verification data
• Substellar Objects in Nearby Young Clusters (SONYC) VI: The planetary-mass domain of NGC1333
• BANYAN. IX. The Initial Mass Function and Planetary-Mass Object Space Density of the TW Hya Association
• Infrared Spectroscopy and Analysis of Brown Dwarf and Planetary Mass Objects in the Orion Nebula Cluster
• Substellar Objects in Nearby Young Clusters (SONYC): The bottom of the Initial Mass Function in NGC1333
• Survivability of planetary systems in young and dense star clusters
• Constraining Lyman-alpha spatial offsets at $3<z<5.5$ from VANDELS slit spectroscopy
• Connecting Galactic Outflows and Star Formation: Inferences from H-alpha Maps and Absorption Line Spectroscopy at 1 < z < 1.5

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Across the Green Valley with HST grisms: colour evolution, crossing time-scales and the growth of the red sequence at $z=1.0-1.8$