Infrared Camera (IRC) onboard ASTRO-F

The infrared camera(IRC) onboard ASTRO-F is designed for wide-eld imaging and spectroscopic observations at near- and mid-infrared wavelengths. The IRC consists of three channels; NIR, MIR-S and MIR-L, each of which covers wavelengths of 2-5, 5-12 and 12-26 micron, respectively. All channels adopt compact refractive optical designs. Large format array detectors (InSb 512x412 and Si:As IBC 256x256) are employed. Each channel has 10x10 arcmin wide FOV with diraction-limited angular resolution of the 67cm telescope of ASTRO-F at wavelengths over 5 micron. A 6-position lter wheel is placed at the aperture stop in each channel, and has three band-pass lters, two grisms/prisms and a mask for dark current measurements. The 5 sigma sensitivity of one pointed observation is estimated to be 2, 11 and 62 micro-Jy at 4, 9, 20 micron bands, respectively. Because ASTRO-F is a low-earth orbiting satellite, the observing duration of each pointing is limited to 500 seconds. In addition to pointed observations, we plan to perform mid-infrared scanning observation. Fabrications of the ight-model of NIR, MIR-S, and the warm electronics have been mostly completed, while that of MIR-L is underway. The performance evaluation of the IRC in the rst end-to-end test (including the satellite system) is presented