NASA Mission Update: SOFIA
02.20.09
Visible light - the light you see with your eyes - reveals only one part of the universe. When clouds of gas and dust block the light emitted by distant objects, astronomers can explore by using radiation from elsewhere on the electromagnetic spectrum: in x-ray, radio, and other wavelengths. The infrared is where the energy from many astronomical objects can be detected. In fact, star formation regions, centers of galaxies, and other celestial phenomena whose visible light can't get through the dust and gas clouds surrounding them can only be studied in the infrared. Astronomers will soon have at their disposal NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, the biggest and most powerful airborne observatory in the world.
Paul Hertz : 08:44 "SOFIA is a great addition to our suite of great observatories. It adds infrared capability, but unlike Hubble and Chandra, SOFIA comes home every day." It is a 747 plane in which we have put a 2.5 meter infrared telescope and we've configured to have a door in the back of the plane that we can open in flight to observe the universe."
Narration: In the front of SOFIA, scientists will conduct their astronomical observations in a pressurized, shirt sleeve environment. Behind a pressurized bulkhead, SOFIA's 100 inch-diameter reflecting telescope will gaze out into the universe at some 35,000 to 45,000 feet above sea level, the highest a passenger aircraft can fly.
Paul Hertz: "The important part of SOFIA is that it flies above 99.99% of all the water in the earth's atmosphere so that we can observe the infrared universe without being blocked by the earth’s atmosphere."
Narration: When it becomes operational in 2010, SOFIA will fly out of NASA's Dryden Aircraft Operation Center about 100 nights a year. During its expected 20-year lifetime, SOFIA will make "Great Observatory" - class astronomical science - by seeing the heavens in a different "light."
Paul Hertz: "We'll be able to study how the molecules come together to form stars and planets. We'll be able to study the process in other pre-biotic molecules as they are created in stellar systems and propagated throughout the galaxy and we'll be able to study the energetics and the Quasars and black hole engines at the center of galaxies outside our own."
Narration: For more on SOFIA, log onto
www.nasa.gov/sofia.
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