NASA's Telescope Plane Takes to the Skies, Snaps First Images

[n2doc]

Images of Jupiter are the first of 20 years' worth of potentially groundbreaking astronomical imagery
By Rebecca BoylePosted 06.01.2010 at 4:00 pm0 Comments

Sofia First Light The first light image from Sofia, NASA's flying telescope, shows heat radiating from Jupiter. A recent visual-wavelength picture of approximately the same side of Jupiter is shown for comparison. NASA/Anthony Wesley


Infrared images of Jupiter and the galaxy M82 are the first pictures from NASA’s flying telescope, which took to the skies late last week.
The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, is a modified Boeing 747 jet with a hole in its side to make room for a diameter reflecting telescope 100 inches in diameter. The May 26 flight lasted six hours and reached 35,000 feet.

The “Faint Object infraRed Camera for the Sofia Telescope,” or Forcast instrument, took only minutes to capture that image. It would have taken hours to do so with ground-based telescopes, because water vapor in the atmosphere blocks their view.

Sofia flies above 99 percent of the obstructing water vapor, which allows it to receive about 80 percent of the infrared light visible to the orbiting observatories. It’s actually more powerful than the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, because it can see light ranging from ultraviolet to the far infrared.

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http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-06/telescope-plane-takes-skies-snaps-first-images

[atomic-fly]

1. cool

look forward to the data it collects.

[Spheric]

2. Very. /nt

[qazplm]

3. it's a genius idea

makes one wonder why we haven't donet his more.

How much cheaper it would be to buy up a few high altitude planes, stick various types of instrument packages on them, instead of sending up space based telescopes all of the time.

I know you still need to, you need the coldness and clarity of space for certain types of telescopes/missions, but this is still a great idea.