Airborne Observatory - ...SOFIA

Palomar · 2004-09-13 10:19:22

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0409/12sofia/]Click

*This seems like a bolt out of the blue. I follow astro news stories nearly every day. Maybe I forgot about this project! ???

Seems a strange proposition in a way, though. :hm:

Anywho:

"Flying at altitudes above 40,000 feet, SOFIA will help astronomers learn more about the birth of stars, the formation of solar systems, the origin of complex molecules in space, the nature and evolution of comets, how galaxies change with time and even the nature of the mysterious black holes lying at the centers of some galaxies, including our own..."

*I like the acronym of the one instrument aboard: HIPO.

"Scientists use HIPO to provide high-speed, time-resolved imaging photometry at two optical wavelengths. HIPO has a flexible optical system and numerous readout modes, which allow many specialized observations to be made. The primary function of HIPO is to observe stellar occultations. During a stellar occultation, a star serves as a small probe of the atmospheric structure of a solar system object, or the surface density structure of a planetary ring or comet."

*Nix the tea and coffee...I'll have a diet soda. Thanks. All aboard!

--Cindy

SBird · 2004-09-13 12:28:17

We've had airborne IR observatories for a while but they've been, to my knowledge, all military in nature for tracking incoming ICBM warheads until now.

This has got me thinking. What about those high altitude giant balloon platforms that JP aerospace is working on? They might make an ideal platform for mounting large telecopes. Imagine a Hubble on the cheap. It should be fairly simple to mount a few 2m scopes on those platforms. At that altitude, most of the UV and IR bands should be usable and the atmospheric interference effects will be minimal.

SpaceNut · 2004-09-13 12:54:02

There have been a number of balloons used over the years for studing black hole to other. I remember seeing an article of an Air force near space tri angular shape one earlier this year but can not remember the name.

Palomar · 2004-09-13 13:19:03

*And speaking of ye olde balloons...

This has got me thinking. What about those high altitude giant balloon platforms that JP aerospace is working on? They might make an ideal platform for mounting large telecopes. Imagine a Hubble on the cheap. It should be fairly simple to mount a few 2m scopes on those platforms.

What about the Skyhook balloon of the 1957 Stratoscope Project? It's archived at the centennialofflight.gov site. Funky bit of history there.

[Hi SBird...as for military stuff...I guess it's apparent I'm not familiar with that. :;): ]

--Cindy

SBird · 2004-09-13 14:29:25

Yeah, we've used balloon-based telescopes for a looong time. What I'm thinking of is a bit more ambitions. Rather than a relatively small telescope up for a few months, what we could have would be a large (few meter) telescope that's basically a permanent emplacement in the sky.

SpaceNut · 2004-09-20 05:41:35

This weeks space review talks of the “Near Space”: a new area of operations or a new Pentagon buzzword?

While greater than suborbital but not quite LEO this is a strategic area of space and of military concern for control.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/230/1

SpaceNut · 2004-09-20 11:04:56

NASA Airborne Observatory Sees Stars for First Time

For the first time, scientists have peered at the stars using the newly installed telescope aboard NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), the largest airborne observatory in the world

http://www.nasa.gov/vision....mw.html

http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/releases/2 … sofia.html

SpaceNut · 2004-10-06 09:17:36

While this has nothing to do with SOFIA it however does with regards to planes. It appears that humpty dumpty has put to gether Pathfinder the solar powered winged plane again. This time it is a plus in that it has been outfitted with new instruments.

Pathfinder-Plus Solar Wing Readied to Fly Again at NASA Dryden
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/aerospace-04u.html

Palomar · 2004-10-22 06:36:21

*Oh my god! Its]http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041022.html]It's the Horta's eggs!!!

Is our gov't secretly hoarding Horta eggs? If so, they've been found out!

teehee...

That is one fabulous pic and an informative caption. I love the knowledge and power of science, and also its unique beauty.

--Cindy

SpaceNut · 2005-02-21 08:21:06

Not always easy to find just the right thread to include reference articles of progress and who is doing the research but here goes.
National Scientific Balloon Facility (NSBF) to launch telescope

The launch of the large and heavy telescope, called BLAST (Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope), is part of the space agency's way of using balloons to lift heavy payloads to an altitude of about 25 miles.
The first launch will carry the BLAST telescope aloft. The 5,940 pound telescope will reach an altitude of 25 miles and the flight will take between six to nine days.
BLAST will look for places stars are forming and for places where carbon dust is heated up by newly formed stars

SpaceNut · 2005-03-10 09:33:33

Scientists rig 747 as flying observatory

SOFIA is said to provide the ability to do better observations than ground-based telescopes and is less expensive than orbiting telescopes.

U.S. and German scientists will be studying black holes and new stars in a converted Boeing 747SP.

What is a SOFIA:

SOFIA will be able to carry up to 30 scientists, engineers and guests in the converted Boeing 747SP, a former passenger aircraft that NASA bought for about $5 million and then reconfigured. The flying observatory's equipment includes a 17-ton infrared telescope whose main mirror has a diameter of about 106 inches (2.7 meters).
The observatory is designed to operate at altitudes of up to 46,000 feet (14,000 meters), above most of the planet's water vapor, which interferes with infrared observations.

SpaceNut · 2005-06-06 07:24:50

Back to the mother ship

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, as the plane-based telescope will be called, is one of the U.S. astronomy community's most wished-for projects of this decade, said Dana Backman, the education specialist for the project at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., and an infrared astronomer.

Notice the window

Is this a dream, pinch me...

The telescope will have the capacity to help find planets beyond our solar system, detect a black hole, describe atmospheres of planets closer to home, and look at stars still forming by peering through dust to measure light of varying wavelengths. It'll be based at Ames in California, but is now under construction in Waco.

SpaceNut · 2005-06-07 10:27:52

I think we have more than one type of system for telescope viewing and use in the thread. One by air craft and the other by Balloon. Canadian company developed technology for Tuesday launch of cosmic telescope

Technology developed by a British Columbian company will help a balloon the size of a football stadium carry a telescope to the edge of the atmosphere this week.
The weather will need to be perfect for the launch in Sweden that will send the NASA balloon to an altitude of at least 40 kilometres, and across Canada from the Atlantic to the Northwest Territories.

Lots cheaper than a space telescope to repair or upgrade as mentioned in the article.

SpaceNut · 2005-06-13 12:34:55

Balloon scope studies origin of stars Drifts on winds above atmosphere Captures eons-old faint microwaves

The project is called BLAST (balloon-borne large aperture submillimetre telescope).

Canadian and American astronomers are gathering new evidence today about the birth of stars and galaxies using a unique balloon telescope that's drifting west from Europe almost 40 kilometres above the Earth.
The 33-storey-high balloon and its two-tonne science payload were launched late Saturday from northern Sweden on an odyssey projected to end next weekend in the Western Arctic

Rxke · 2005-06-13 15:15:45

fantastic (photo)blog about this: http://gimli.physics.utoronto.ca/Kiruna … runa_2005/

Figures, a very nice mission, lots of info, and Slashdotters have only 12 comments on it, half of them off-topic

SpaceNut · 2005-06-17 08:10:13

Space telescope has safe landing

Four days and five hours after leaving Earth from a launch site in Sweden, Canada's BLAST space telescope landed safely on Victoria Island in the Canadian Arctic early yesterday.
Unprecedented flight expected to reveal details about origins of the universe

Just waiting on the images now.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-05-09 11:44:29

NASA defends decision to shut down SOFIA

https://spacenews.com/nasa-defends-deci … own-sofia/

This was not the first time NASA proposed terminating SOFIA. The agency’s budget proposals in fiscal years 2021 and 2022 also recommended shutting down SOFIA for a similar rationale, as did the agency’s fiscal year 2015 budget request. All three times Congress restored funding for SOFIA.

Alfred Krabbe, head of DSI, said in the statement that he hopes Congress restores funding for SOFIA for at least one more year, adding that the James Webb Space Telescope cannot replace SOFIA since SOFIA operates at longer infrared wavelengths than what JWST can observe. Congress, he noted, has supported SOFIA in the past.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-06-06 18:33:17

Cosmic dust imaged by the airborne SOFIA observatory reveals a white dwarf eclipsing a variable star in a binary system.

https://astronomy.com/news/2022/06/sofi … nary-stars

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#1 2004-09-13 10:19:22

Re: Airborne Observatory - ...SOFIA

#2 2004-09-13 12:28:17

Re: Airborne Observatory - ...SOFIA

#3 2004-09-13 12:54:02

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#4 2004-09-13 13:19:03

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#5 2004-09-13 14:29:25

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#6 2004-09-20 05:41:35

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#7 2004-09-20 11:04:56

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#8 2004-10-06 09:17:36

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#9 2004-10-22 06:36:21

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#10 2005-02-21 08:21:06

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#11 2005-03-10 09:33:33

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#12 2005-06-06 07:24:50

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#13 2005-06-07 10:27:52

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#14 2005-06-13 12:34:55

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#15 2005-06-13 15:15:45

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#16 2005-06-17 08:10:13

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#17 2022-05-09 11:44:29

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#18 2022-06-06 18:33:17

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