The advent of far infrared arrays will change fundamentally the
means of analyzing observations in this spectral region. Sources
much fainter than traditional "confusion limits" will be extracted
from images by using computer algorithms similar to CLEAN or
DAOPHOT. We have conducted numerical experiments to evaluate these
techniques and show that they will permit long integrations (
10,000 sec at 60
m, 200 sec at 100m) to achieve nearly
photon-background-limited performance and hence very deep detection
limits. The dominant noise sources - photon noise, confusion by
distant galaxies, and confusion by IR cirrus - scale with nearly
the same power of the telescope aperture. As a result, the
integration times required to reach confusion limits are nearly
aperture-independent.
confusion limit, infrared arrays