2.2.3 What is the instrument sensitivity?

To determine the instrument sensitivity we need to look at the documentation for each instrument separately. For all of the instruments, the sensitivity has been estimated for the qualitative background characterizations given in the previous section. See:

• IRAC: http://ssc.spitzer.caltech.edu/irac/sens.html

• IRS: http://ssc.spitzer.caltech.edu/irs/sens.html

• MIPS: http://ssc.spitzer.caltech.edu/mips/sens.html

An online Performance Estimation Tool (PET) has been developed that returns sensitivities for user-configured observing parameters. See:

http://ssc.spitzer.caltech.edu/tools/.