The SMILES Mid-Infrared Survey

TL;DR

The SMILES survey utilizes JWST's MIRI instrument's advanced mid-infrared imaging capabilities to enable detailed extragalactic studies, leveraging its spectral coverage, sensitivity, and resolution to surpass previous infrared missions.

Contribution

This paper introduces the SMILES survey, highlighting its design, scientific potential, and how it capitalizes on JWST's MIRI instrument's enhanced spectral and imaging capabilities.

Findings

Enhanced spectral coverage from 5 to 26 microns enables detailed galaxy analysis.

Increased sensitivity and resolution improve detection of faint extragalactic sources.

The survey demonstrates the potential for new discoveries in mid-infrared astronomy.

Abstract

The Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) for JWST is supplied with a suite of imaging bandpass filters optimized for full spectral coverage in eight intermediate-width bands from 5 to 26 microns and a narrower one at 11.3 microns. This contrasts with previous infrared space telescopes, which generally have provided only two broad bands, one near 10 microns and the other near 20 microns. The expanded MIRI spectral capability provides new possibilities for detailed interpretation of survey results. This is an important feature of the instrument, on top of its great increase in sensitivity and angular resolution over any previous mission. The Systematic Mid-infrared Instrument Legacy Extragalactic Survey (SMILES) was designed to take full advantage of this capability. This paper briefly describes the history of infrared surveys that paved the way for MIRI on JWST and for our approach to designng SMILES. It illustrates the use of the observations for a broad range of science programs, and concludes with a brief summary of the need for additional surveys with JWST/MIRI.