There's Been Another Slight Hiccup, With The MIRI Mode, When In Medium Resolution Imaging Phase... Easily Compensated For, Though.

This was the last time we saw a small issue with MIRI ops, when one of the mirrors took a micro-meteorite hit, last year. But this is a new, internal glitch.

It seems the sensors in medium resolution imaging mode are recording less light, at ultra-long wavelengths than expected. The simple solution is just to take a slightly-longer exposure picture. But the team will continue to bird-dog the issue, even though nothing, science wise, is being impacted.

It is important to know whether it is hardware (a fried circuit from another micro-strike) or software -- simply some bad lines of code, in the millions of lines running the rig. Here's the latest:

. . .Last week, NASA shared a blog post saying they detected a sensor glitch associated with the. . . Telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). For some reason, the sensor for MIRI’s Medium Resolution Spectroscopy (MRS) is receiving less light than expected at the longest wavelengths.

NASA is investigating the cause, and said that the instrument is not at risk and no effect has been seen for images taken by MIRI. According to agency officials, all other modes of JWST and MIRI remain unaffected, and they are searching for the underlying issue.

The glitch was found this month during regular calibration and monitoring of the telescope’s performance. NASA said they routinely monitor all 17 observing modes of the telescope and when they compared the brightness of standard stars that have been well-cataloged by other observatories to what MIRI was receiving, team members noticed a discrepancy in the data. . . .

So it goes. . . . And now, onward, to a sunny BBQ with my baby-girls!

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