First Light of the MIRIS, a Compact Wide-field Space IR Telescope

The MIRIS (Multi-purpose InfraRed Imaging System) is a compact IR space Telescope, which has been developed by KASI since 2008 as the main payload of Korean STSAT-3. It was launched successfully by a Dnepr Rocket at Yasny Launch site, Russia in November 2013. After the launch, the STSAT-3 successfully settled down at Sun synchronous orbit with altitude of ~ 600km. Communications were regularly made between the ground station and the MIRIS with other secondary payload. We made a series of tests of the MIRIS during the verification period and found that all functions including the passive cooling are working as expected. The MIRIS has a wide-field of view $3.67{\times}3.67$ degrees and wavelength coverage from 0.9 to 2.0 micro-meter with the angular resolution of 51.6 arcsec. The main science missions of the MIRIS are (1) mapping of the Galactic plane with Paschen-alpha line (1.88 micro-meter) for the study of warm interstellar medium and (2) the measurement of large angular fluctuations of cosmic near infrared background radiation with I (1.05 micro meter) and H (1.6 micro meter) bands to identify their origin. We present the results of MIRIS initial operation in this paper.