4.6.2 Field of View

The four IRAC arrays are fed by two entrance apertures, which are located one above the other in the focal plane with a gap of about 1.5 arcmin. For the subarray mode, there are four separate fields of view (FOVs), corresponding to the subarray section of each of the four arrays.

The observer can select a primary group of detectors for the observation by checking one, or both, of the field-of-view (FOV) boxes, which are labeled by the wavelengths of the detectors in each group. In subarray mode, there are four FOVs, because the subarray portions of the detectors do not overlap on the sky.

Note: the way the AOR will be executed depends both upon the map and field of view choices (i.e., they are co-dependent). For the moment, let us leave aside the choice of field of view and discuss the mapping implications.