Modern Day astronomical tools

Radio telescopes

Radio Telescopes What Are Radio Telescopes? We use radio telescopes to study naturally-occurring radio light from stars, galaxies, black holes, and other astronomical objects. We can also use them to transmit and reflect radio light off of planetary bodies in our solar system.  Radio telescopes are built in all shapes and sizes based on the kind of radio waves they pick up. However, every radio telescope has an antenna on a mount and at least one piece of receiver equipment to detect the signals.  Radio Telescopes

Why We Use Arrays The ability of a radio telescope to distinguish fine detail in the sky, called angular resolution, depends on the wavelength of observations divided by the size of the antenna. Combine the views of a group of antennas spread over a large area to operate together as one gigantic telescope.  Many astronomical objects are not only observable in visible light but also emit radiation at radio wavelengths. Besides observing energetic objects such as pulsars and quasars, radio telescopes are able to "image" most astronomical objects such as galaxies, nebulae, and even radio emissions from planets.

Space telescopes

NASA's series of Great Observatories satellites are four large, powerful space-based telescopes. The four missions were designed to examine a specific region of the electromagnetic spectrum using very different technologies. Dr. Charles Pellerin, NASA's Director, Astrophysics invented and developed the program.

Hubble Space Telescope / NASA, ESA / 1990 / Visible, UV, Near-IR / Deep Space Objects The granddaddy of space telescopes, Hubble has been observing from Earth orbit for more than 25 years. Hubble, the first of NASA's Great Observatories, has revolutionized astronomy, providing stunning images of countless cosmic objects and giving astronomers their most distant views of the universe with the Hubble Deep Field and Ultra Deep Field. Hubble has shed light on the scale of the universe, the life cycle of stars, black holes, and the formation of the first galaxies. Currently receiving its fifth and final makeover, Hubble is expected to last at least another five years, hopefully overlapping with its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope.

Chandra X-ray Observatory / NASA / 1999 / X-ray / Various The third of NASA's four Great Observatories, Chandra is the world's most powerful X-ray telescope. Chandra, named for Indian-American physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, examines the X-rays emitted by some of the universe's strangest objects, including quasars, immense clouds of gas and dust and particles sucked into black holes. X-rays are produced when matter is heated to millions of degrees. Chandra has teamed up several times with other telescopes, including Hubble, to take composite images of galaxies and other denizens of the cosmos. It has found previously hidden black holes, provided observations of the Milky Way's own supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, and even taken the first X-ray images of Mars.

Spitzer Space Telescope / NASA / 2003 / IR / Distant and Nearby Objects Spitzer was the last of the Great Observatories to be launched and gathers the infrared radiation emanating from cosmic objects, including faraway galaxies, black holes and even comets in our own solar system. (Infrared radiation is hard to observe from the ground because it is largely absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere.) Spitzer was the first telescope to see light from an exoplanet, which it was not originally designed to see; it took the temperatures of so-called "hot Jupiters" and found that not all of them are really hot. Spitzer has used the last of the liquid helium coolant that has kept its instruments chilled. Spitzer's instruments will be able to keep going for another two years, meanwhile, the European Space Agency's Herschel telescope is designed to pick up where Spitzer left off.

The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) was a space observatory detecting light from 20 keV to 30 GeV in Earth orbit from 1991 to 2000. It featured four main telescopes in one spacecraft, covering X-rays and gamma rays Costing $617 million, the CGRO was part of NASA's "Great Observatories" series, along with the Hubble Space Telescope, theChandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope. It was the second of the series to be launched into space, following the Hubble Space Telescope.  After one of its 3 gyroscopes failed in December 1999, the observatory was deliberately de-orbited. At the time, the observatory was still operational; however the failure of another gyroscope would have made de-orbiting much more difficult and dangerous. With some controversy, NASA decided in the interest of public safety that a controlled crash was preferable to letting the craft come down on its own at random. Unlike the Hubble Space Telescope, it was not designed for on-orbit repair and refurbishment. It entered the Earth's atmosphere on 4 June 2000, with the debris that did not burn up ("six 1,800-pound aluminum I-beams and parts made of titanium, including more than 5,000 bolts") falling harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean.[7] This de-orbit was NASA's first intentional controlled de-orbit of a satellite.

Herschel Space Observatory / ESA & NASA / 2009 / Far-IR / Various Planck Observatory / ESA / 2009 / Microwave / Cosmic Microwave Background Kepler Mission / NASA / 2009 / Visible / Extrasolar planets Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope / NASA / 2008 / Gamma-ray / Various Swift Gamma Ray Burst Explorer / NASA / 2004 / Gamma ray, X-ray, UV, Visible / Various GALEX / NASA / 2003 / UV / Galaxies Solar & Heliospheric Observatory / NASA & ESA / 1995 / Optical-UV, Magnetic / Sun and Solar Wind STEREO / NASA / 2006 / Visible, UV, Radio / Sun and Coronal Mass Ejections

Flying observatories The first use of an aircraft for performing infrared observations was in 1965 when Gerard P. Kuiper used the NASA Convair 990 to study Venus. Three years later, Frank Low used the Ames Learjet for observations of Jupiter and nebulae. In 1969, planning began for mounting a 36-inch (910 mm) telescope on an airborne platform. The goal was to perform astronomy from the stratosphere, where there was a much lower optical depth from water-vapor-absorbed infrared radiation. This project, named the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, was dedicated on May 21, 1975. The telescope was instrumental in numerous scientific studies, including the discovery of the ring system around the planet Uranus.[19]

• 1945 – Spitfire, Mitchell, Ansons • 1948 – B-29s in Aleutians Early airborne observatories – mostly for solar eclipse studies • 1923 – Navy FL-5 flying boat • 1930 – Vought O2U-1 • 1945 – Spitfire, Mitchell, Ansons • 1948 – B-29s in Aleutians • 1954 – Lincoln 30,000 feet • 1963 – First jets

Learjet Observatory (LJO) 1968–1997 • 11.8 in (30-centimeter) telescope

Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO) High-flying aircraft -- above 40,000 ft -- can observe most of the infrared universe Airborne infrared telescopes can be more versatile -- and much less expensive -- than space infrared telescopes NASA’s Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO) C-141 with a 36-inch telescope onboard, based at NASA-Ames near San Francisco, flew from 1975 - 1995 ,

Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO) • 1,424 astronomy research flights • 600 investigators • 1,000+ scientific & technical papers • 50 Ph.D. theses 1974–1995 • 36-inch (91.4-centimeter) telescope

SOFIA--The Next Generation Airborne Observatory • 2.5-meter (100-inch) telescope in a Boeing 747SP • Based at NASA-Dryden’s Aircraft Ops Facility in Palmdale, with Science Center at NASA-Ames • 120+ 8-hour research flights per year; 20 year lifetime • 20% share with the German space agency DLR • The world’s largest portable telescope! • Useful for both visible and infrared research • 1+ month per year in southern hemisphere • First test flights in 2007, first science flights in 2010

SOFIA is based on a Boeing 747SP wide-body aircraft that has been modified to include a large door in the aft fuselage that can be opened in flight to allow a 2.5 meter diameter reflecting telescope access to the sky. This telescope is designed for infrared astronomy observations in the stratosphere at altitudes of about 41,000 feet (12 km). SOFIA's flight capability allows it to rise above almost all of the water vapor in the Earth's atmosphere, which blocks some infrared wavelengths from reaching the ground. At the aircraft's cruising altitude, 85% of the full infrared range will be available. The aircraft can also travel to almost any point on the Earth's surface, allowing observation from the northern and southern hemispheres.

SOFIA’s “First Light” Image of Jupiter May, 2010

SOFIA observations of a stellar occultation by Pluto on July 23, 2011 Dwarf planet Pluto (V ~ 14) occulted a star (V ~ 14.4). SOFIA met the shadow of Pluto in mid-Pacific. => HIPO (Lowell Obs.) and FDC (DSI) instruments observed the occultation simultaneously. Image sequence from the Fast Diagnostic Camera (FDC) FDC Pluto (circled) is 13 arcsec from the star 200 minutes before the occultation Just before occultation: Pluto and star merged, combined light During occultation: Pluto and star merged, only Pluto light seen After occultation: Pluto and star merged, combined light