Comparison with other Far-Infrared Arrays
These are logarithmically scaled versions of comparison images
generated for MIPS, SOFIA, ISO, and IRAS. A test field
was "observed" with these four instruments, giving each instrument 24 hours
of integration time and taking into account the sensitivity, the plate
scale, and the field of view. The IRAS image has very large pixels and
is really only capable of detecting the infrared cirrus in this field. The
ISO image has better spatial resolution but is limited by the small
field-of-view and low sensitivity of the arrays. SOFIA has excellent
spatial resolution because of the large (2.5m) telescope but a
correspondingly small field-of-view (even with a 32x32 array) and is
limited in sensitivity because it uses warm optics. The predicted MIPS
performance on the test field is excellent because of the high sensitivity
of the detectors, good spatial resolution, and the large field-of-view of
the 32x32 array.
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