JWST-TST Proper Motions: I. High-Precision NIRISS Calibration and Large Magellanic Cloud Kinematics

Abstract

We develop and disseminate effective point-spread functions and geometric-distortion solutions for high-precision astrometry and photometry with the JWST NIRISS instrument. We correct field dependencies and detector effects, and assess the quality and the temporal stability of the calibrations. As a scientific application and validation, we study the proper motion (PM) kinematics of stars in the JWST calibration field near the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) center, comparing to a first-epoch Hubble Space Telescope (HST) archival catalog with a 16-yr baseline. For stars with G~20, the median PM uncertainty is ~13 $\mu$as yr${}^{-1}$ (3.1 km s${}^{-1}$), better than Gaia DR3 typically achieves for its very best-measured stars. We kinematically detect the known star cluster OGLE-CL LMC 407, measure its absolute PM for the first time, and show how this differs from other LMC populations. The inferred cluster dispersion sets an upper limit of 24 $\mu$as yr${}^{-1}$ (5.6 km s${}^{-1}$) on systematic uncertainties. Red-giant-branch stars have a velocity dispersion of 33.8 $\pm$ 0.6 km s${}^{-1}$, while younger blue populations have a narrower velocity distribution, but with a significant kinematical substructure. We discuss how this relates to the larger velocity dispersions inferred from Gaia DR3. These results establish JWST as capable of state-of-the-art astrometry, building on the extensive legacy of HST. This is the first paper in a series by our JWST Telescope Scientist Team (TST), in which we will use Guaranteed Time Observations to study the PM kinematics of various stellar systems in the Local Group.

arXiv comment28 pages, 25 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in ApJ. The effective point-spread-function models, the geometric-distortion solutions and a preliminary version of the code are available at the links provided in the manuscript

References in corpus (52)

• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• The Astropy Project: Building an inclusive, open-science project and status of the v2.0 core package
• The Gaia mission
• The Galaxy in Context: Structural, Kinematic and Integrated Properties
• Gaia Early Data Release 3: The astrometric solution
• WFPC2 Stellar Photometry with HSTphot
• Resolved Massive Star Clusters in the Milky Way and its Satellites: Brightness Profiles and a Catalogue of Fundamental Parameters
• A distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud that is precise to one per cent
• New Understanding of Large Magellanic Cloud Structure, Dynamics and Orbit from Carbon Star Kinematics
• The total mass of the Large Magellanic Cloud from its perturbation on the Orphan stream
• Toward High-Precision Astrometry with WFPC2. I. Deriving an Accurate PSF
• Third-Epoch Magellanic Cloud Proper Motions II: The Large Magellanic Cloud Rotation Field in Three Dimensions
• New Limits on an Intermediate Mass Black Hole in Omega Centauri: I. Hubble Space Telescope Photometry and Proper Motions
• Astrometry and photometry with HST WFC3. II. Improved geometric-distortion corrections for 10 filters of the UVIS channel
• Hubble Space Telescope Proper Motion (HSTPROMO) Catalogs of Galactic Globular Clusters. I. Sample Selection, Data Reduction and NGC 7078 Results
• The brighter-fatter effect and pixel correlations in CCD sensors
• Hubble Space Telescope proper motion (HSTPROMO) catalogs of Galactic globular clusters. II. Kinematic profiles and maps
• The State-of-the-Art HST Astro-Photometric Analysis of the core of $\omega$ Centauri. I. The Catalog
• The James Webb Space Telescope Mission: Optical Telescope Element Design, Development, and Performance
• Reaching the End of the White Dwarf Cooling Sequence in NGC 6791
• The Hubble Space Telescope UV Legacy Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters. XXIII. Proper-motion catalogs and internal kinematics
• Hubble Space Telescope Proper motion (HSTPROMO) Catalogs of Galactic Globular Clusters. VI. Improved data reduction and internal-kinematic analysis of NGC 362
• The State-of-the-Art HST Astro-Photometric Analysis of the core of ωCentauri. III. The Main Sequence's Multiple Populations Galore
• Gaia Early Data Release 3: Modelling and calibration of Gaia's point and line spread functions
• Photometry and astrometry with JWST -- I. NIRCam Point Spread Functions and the first JWST colour-magnitude diagrams of a globular cluster
• Age and Mass for 920 LMC Clusters Derived from 100 Million Monte Carlo Simulations
• Evidence for Tidal Effects in the Stellar Dynamics of the Large Magellanic Cloud
• HST Proper Motions of NGC 147 and NGC 185: Orbital Histories and Test of Dynamically Coherent Andromeda Satellite Plane
• Microarcsecond Astrometry: Science Highlights from Gaia
• Transverse kinematics of the Galactic bar-bulge from VVV and Gaia
• Ground-based astrometry with wide field imagers. V. Application to near-infrared detectors: HAWK-I@VLT/ESO
• Laboratory measurement of the brighter-fatter effect in an H2RG infrared detector
• The Hubble Space Telescope UV Legacy Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters. XVIII. Proper-motion kinematics of multiple stellar populations in the core regions of NGC 6352
• A PSF-based approach to Kepler/K2 data. II. Exoplanet candidates in Praesepe (M 44)
• Gaia DR2 reveals a very massive runaway star ejected from R136
• Stellar 3-D kinematics in the Draco dwarf spheroidal galaxy
• The HST large programme on $\omega$ Centauri -- III. Absolute proper motion
• High-precision astrometry with VVV. I. An independent reduction pipeline for VIRCAM@VISTA
• The central velocity dispersion of the Milky Way bulge
• 2D kinematics of massive stars near the Galactic Center
• Kinematical Structure of the Magellanic System
• The Hubble Space Telescope UV Legacy Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters. XXIV. Differences in internal kinematics of multiple stellar populations
• Hubble Space Telescope astrometry of the closest brown dwarf binary system -- I. Overview and improved orbit
• Metallicities and ages for star clusters and their surrounding fields in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Hunting for intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters: an astrometric study of NGC 6441
• James Webb Space Telescope Optical Simulation Testbed I: Overview and First Results
• Kinematic outliers in the LMC: constraints on star-star microlensing
• Photometry and astrometry with JWST -- II. NIRCam distortion correction
• The internal proper motion kinematics of NGC346: past formation and future evolution
• The Y dwarf population with HST: unlocking the secrets of our coolest neighbours -- I. Overview & First astrometric results
• James Webb Space Telescope Optical Simulation Testbed V: Wide-field phase retrieval assessment
• Local Group Proper Motion Dynamics

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Constraining Dark Energy from Local Group dynamics
• JWST-TST High Contrast: JWST/NIRCam observations of the young giant planet $\beta$ Pic b
• Identification of a turnover in the initial mass function of a young stellar cluster down to 0.5 M${}_J$
• JWST-TST DREAMS: Non-Uniform Dayside Emission for WASP-17b from MIRI/LRS
• An Algorithm to Mitigate Charge Migration Effects in Data from the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph on the James Webb Space Telescope
• The $Hubble$ Missing Globular Cluster Survey. I. Survey overview and the first precise age estimate for ESO452-11 and 2MASS-GC01
• Kinematics and metallicity of the dwarf spheroidal galaxy Andromeda XVIII
• spike: A tool to drizzle HST, JWST, and Roman PSFs for improved analyses
• The multi-age stellar populations of Terzan 5 as revealed by JWST
• Demonstration of Plate Analysis, an algorithm for precise relative astrometry