Brrr. Webb's MIRI has Reached 6.4 Kelvin, Just a few Degrees Above Absolute Zero - By Nancy_A
Overview of the MIRI instrument. The instrument is attached to the JWST Integrated Science Instrument Module by the CFRP hexapod .Most of the telescope and its instruments rely on JWST’s massive sunshield to shield it from the heat from the Sun and Earth to cool it down, as well as passive cooling — taking advantage of the frigid temperatures in deep space.
Last week, the team passed a particularly challenging milestone called the “pinch point,” when the instrument goes from 15 kelvins to 6.4 kelvins . NASA says that another reason Webb’s detectors need to be cold is to suppress something called dark current, or electric current created by the vibration of atoms in the detectors themselves. Dark current mimics a true signal in the detectors, giving the false impression that they have been hit by light from an external source. Those false signals can drown out the real signals astronomers want to find.
MIRI’s longer infrared detectors are more sensitive to dark current, so it needs to be colder than the other instruments to fully remove that effect. For every degree the instrument temperature goes up, the dark current goes up by a factor of about 10.
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