Calibration Subsystem Performance
The Wide Field Camera 3 instrument has four tungsten lamps and one deuterium lamp that are used to obtain internal flat-field images (flats). These flats are used to aid in the monitoring of the performance of the UVIS and IR detectors and are used to look for pixel-to-pixel variations, filter performance and other effects. Any of the four tungsten lamps can be used with either the UVIS or the IR detector, but for routine on-orbit observations only lamp 3 is used with UVIS and lamp 2 is used for IR. The deuterium lamp is solely used with the UVIS detector. The lamps all reside in a separate calibration subsystem which has a significantly different f-ratio from the external beam.
This page contains all of the results from our recent analyses of UVIS detector tungsten and deuterium flat-field images. Tungsten lamp flat-fields were taken between May 2009 to March 2021, and deuterium lamp flat-fields were taken between August 2009 to May 2021. The relevant publications are linked at the end of the page.
Tungsten Lamp and Filter Performance Charts
Accordion
Deuterium Lamp and Filter Performance Charts
Publications
ISR 2021-15: WFC3/UVIS Tungsten Lamp and Filter Performance 2009-2021
ISR 2021-16: WFC3/UVIS: Deuterium Lamp and Filter Performance 2009-2021