It's one thing to find them, another to prove their habitability.
"Using a technique called transit spectroscopy, the NIRISS instrument can collect a spectrum of an exoplanet’s atmosphere, which contains different markers that allow astronomers to determine its composition, temperature, potential habitability signatures, and other important characteristics," explained Ourellette in the blog post.,"such as galaxies, at the same time over the detector's entire field of view" — which is 4.84 square arc-minutes, according to Ourellette.
And there's more. NIRISS is capable of gathering information from many spectra at once in WFSS mode, which means discrete spectra might overlap ."There are thus two orthogonal grisms, GR150C and GR150R, that can produce spectra horizontally and vertically, respectively, which helps to disentangle blended spectra from different galaxies," said Ourellette.In SOSS mode, Webb's NIRISS instrument can examine the atmospheres of alien worlds as they transit their host star.
Additionally, the NIRISS' AMI mode will enable Webb to examine cosmic objects that are in close proximity . This will be done with a special technique known as interferometry."A mask inside the instrument allows light from only certain parts of the primary mirror to pass through," explained Ourellette."Astronomers can increase the resolution of the telescope by a factor of nearly 2.
By using this method, two objects that are in close apparent proximity can still appear as two distinct points of light — instead of a nonsensical blur. However, since the mask blocks a lot of light, the observed cosmic objects need to be fairly bright, for detection to happen.
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