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7.9 Correction for the LWS aperture size for point sources and extended sources

 

The LWS processing corrects the data for the effective aperture of the instrument, assuming that the source that is observed is a point source in the center of the LWS aperture. For an extended source a correction has to be applied to the calculated fluxes, because for an extended source (that is bigger than the LWS aperture) the diffraction of the telescope shall not be wavelength dependent. For a point source the instrument is diffraction limited at about 110 tex2html_wrap_inline5295m, so for longer wavelengths the effective aperture of the instrument will be smaller (part of the flux will be defracted out of the aperture). For a source that is in between these to cases, the procedure is more complicated and would involve a deconvolution with the instrument beam pattern. At this moment the procedure to do this is not yet known. In Table 7.2 the correction factor for the center wavelengths of the ten detectors is given for point and extended sources.

 

  centering1419


Table 7.2: The correction factors for the effective aperture of the instrument. Please note that these are very rough estimates.



N.Trams, ISO Science Operations Team
Using inputs from:
C.Gry, T. Lim, LWS Instrument Dedicated Team
A.Harwood, P.E.Clegg, B.Swinyard, K.King, LWS Instrument Team
S.Lord, S.Unger, IPAC.