Increasing Sensitivity to Trailed Solar System Objects in Archival JWST NIRCam Imaging with Group Differencing
- 1Western University
Abstract
The JWST archive contains thousands of NIRCam exposures distributed across the sky. Small solar system bodies (SSSBs) are present in many of these fields, but are often trailed and more difficult to detect. The standard pipeline produces a single image by fitting a slope to a sequence of N cumulative “up-the-ramp” groups of the detector. Thus, each JWST image comprises a time series of cumulative reads. We demonstrate that transforming the ramp into a series of group difference images reduces the per-image trail length of moving sources, producing an ( N − 1)-group photometrically calibrated time series from an N -group integration. This enables higher-cadence trajectory-based searches using as few as a single JWST exposure. A generalized least-squares fit of the group difference images along the trajectory of a moving source recovers the source flux at higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) when compared to the ramp fit, with the improvement scaling with the reduction in trailing. We validate our procedure on 13 moving objects detected in archival JWST NIRCam images. To estimate our increase in sensitivity, we perform an injection/recovery simulation on the JWST imagery. Trailed moving objects recovered via group differencing show higher SNRs, improving completeness to moving sources compared to standard calibrations. For typical integration lengths of N = 4 or 6 for archival JWST/NIRCam exposures in the ecliptic, group differencing yields gains in sensitivity between ∼1.1 and 1.4 mag, based on simulation results. This method significantly increases the sensitivity of archival JWST surveys to trailed SSSBs.
Related
- Archival Counterpart Censuses for Never-alerted IceCube Events and the Ultra-high-energy Neutrino KM3-230213A
- The Longest Increasing Subsequence Problem revisited
- Robust single-pixel imaging for high-speed rotating objects with large rotational speed variations
- Black objects in a five-dimensional swirling spacetime
- Core reduction for increasing neutron flux and radioisotope production in the IEA-R1 research reactor
BibTeX
@article{girmenia2026increasing,
title = {{Increasing Sensitivity to Trailed Solar System Objects in Archival JWST NIRCam Imaging with Group Differencing}},
author = {Anthony Girmenia and Stanimir Metchev},
journal = {The Astronomical Journal},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.3847/1538-3881/aeab8a},
url = {https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/aeab8a},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Increasing Sensitivity to Trailed Solar System Objects in Archival JWST NIRCam Imaging with Group Differencing
AU - Anthony Girmenia
AU - Stanimir Metchev
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/13
JO - The Astronomical Journal
DO - 10.3847/1538-3881/aeab8a
UR - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/aeab8a
AB - The JWST archive contains thousands of NIRCam exposures distributed across the sky. Small solar system bodies (SSSBs) are present in many of these fields, but are often trailed and more difficult to detect. The standard pipeline produces a single image by fitting a slope to a sequence of N cumulative “up-the-ramp” groups of the detector. Thus, each JWST image comprises a time series of cumulative reads. We demonstrate that transforming the ramp into a series of group difference images reduces the per-image trail length of moving sources, producing an ( N − 1)-group photometrically calibrated time series from an N -group integration. This enables higher-cadence trajectory-based searches using as few as a single JWST exposure. A generalized least-squares fit of the group difference images along the trajectory of a moving source recovers the source flux at higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) when compared to the ramp fit, with the improvement scaling with the reduction in trailing. We validate our procedure on 13 moving objects detected in archival JWST NIRCam images. To estimate our increase in sensitivity, we perform an injection/recovery simulation on the JWST imagery. Trailed moving objects recovered via group differencing show higher SNRs, improving completeness to moving sources compared to standard calibrations. For typical integration lengths of N = 4 or 6 for archival JWST/NIRCam exposures in the ecliptic, group differencing yields gains in sensitivity between ∼1.1 and 1.4 mag, based on simulation results. This method significantly increases the sensitivity of archival JWST surveys to trailed SSSBs.
SN - 0004-6256
SN - 1538-3881
ER -