Field Series 2 — Field 1328, MIRI channel 3

The one mid-infrared cube in the first half of the Field Series: jw01328-o010, read by MIRI’s third spectrometer channel at its medium setting — much longer wavelengths than anything NIRSpec returns, and a much smaller field.

Same three-part shape as the rest of the series. Fourteen minutes of the hundred most distinctive passages; ninety-three minutes of the open field, running brightness, obstruction, gradient and the beginning of the line reading at twenty-four minutes each; then seven minutes of the fifty rarest.

This is the most evenly spread cube in the series — no single reading dominates its distinctive suite, though flow and lines edge ahead. Its rare suite tips the other way: nearly two in five of those passages come from the gradient reading, the derivative of intensity along wavelength, which is where spectral lines register as events rather than as tone.

Before Birth is an acknowledged test series.