NIRCam is the Near InfraRed CAMera for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) which launched on December 25, 2021. JWST is an infrared-optimized 6.5-m cryogenic telescope that will have unprecedented sensitivity in the near and mid-infrared ( 1 - 28.5 microns). The NIRCam has a field of view of 2.2 X 2.2 arcmin in each of two modules and high angular resolution (0.07 arcsec at 2 microns). It covers a wavelength range of 0.6 to 5 micrometers and uses ten 2048 X 2048 pixel mercury-cadmium-telluride (HgCdTe) detector arrays. The instrument construction is led by the University of Arizona (with Lockheed Martin as the prime contractor and detectors from Teledyne Imaging Sensors); the Principal Investigator is Professor Marcia Rieke.
The NIRCam Team is using their JWST Guaranteed Time to explore a variety of areas. A major part of this work is participating in the JADES Collaboration, which aims to find the highest redshift galaxies and to characterize the evolution of galaxies down to the current epoch. This work is executed in collaboration with the NIRSpec team and the MIRI US team. Another focus for the team is observing exoplanets, both using transit spectroscopy and direct imaging on JWST. The team is also responsible for helping Space Telescope Science Institute with NIRCam calibration and monitoring performance.