Final Calibration and Processing of Warm IRAC Data

Abstract

The Spitzer Space Telescope has been conducting a wide range of science investigations including measurement of atmospheric properties of exoplanets and masses of the most distant galaxies during the post-cryogenic operations phase which started in 2009. These investigations using the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) at 3.6 and 4.5 um will likely continue through 2018 when the James Webb Space Telescope will succeed Spitzer. In preparation for the eventual end of the mission and exploiting the excellent stability of the instrument and spacecraft, we have finalized the data pipeline and most of the calibrations for the IRAC instrument in advance of the mission end to minimize the cost of the closeout process. We present the key modifications made as part of the final pipeline development. The calibrations for the warm mission phase have been substantially revised with the absolute photometric calibration performed with the same methodology as the final cryogenic calibration.