First Fruits of the Spitzer Space Telescope: Galactic and Solar System Studies

Abstract

■ Abstract The Spitzer Space Telescope, launched in August 2003, is the infrared member of NASA's Great Observatory family. Spitzer combines the intrinsic sensitivity of a cryogenic telescope in space with the imaging and spectroscopic power of modern infrared detector arrays. This review covers early results from Spitzer that have produced major advances in our understanding of our own solar system and phenomena within the Galaxy. Spitzer has made the first detection of light from extrasolar planets, characterized planet-forming and planetary debris disks around solar-type stars, showed that substellar objects with masses smaller than 10 M Jup form through the same processes as do solar-mass stars, and studied in detail the composition of cometary ejecta in our Solar System. Spitzer's major technical advances will pave the way for yet more powerful future instruments. Spitzer should operate with full capabilities well into 2009, enabling several additional cycles of discovery and follow-up.include studies of protoplanetary and planetary debris disks where Spitzer results-often in combination with those from other perspectives-appear to paint a fairly complete preliminary picture. In other areas, such as observations of extrasolar planets, brown dwarf spectroscopy, and Kuiper Belt object (KBO) studies, we highlight particularly provocative or exciting results from Spitzer. Some topics have been largely omitted, so that this review does not fully encompass the scope of Spitzer results already in hand; most notably, readers interested in interstellar matter should consult individual Spitzer papers and refer to and Cesarsky & Salama (2005) for a comprehensive summary of results from the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO). This review includes primarily results submitted for publication as of January 1, 2006. Early Spitzer results on extragalactic science are reported in Armus (2006) and . The history of Spitzer is described in Werner (2006) and Rieke (2006). OBSERVATORY OVERVIEWDetailed technical descriptions of Spitzer and its three focal plane instruments are provided in the September 2004 special issue of the Astrophysical Journal Supplement (Werner et al. 2004 and following papers) and also in the proceedings of the International Society for Optical Engineering (Roellig et al. 2004b and following papers). We thus limit this technical description to those features of Spitzer most directly related to its scientific performance. We also highlight the innovations demonstrated by Spitzer that might be most applicable to future missions. OrbitSpitzer utilizes an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit. As seen from Earth, Spitzer recedes at about 0.1 AU per year. For Spitzer, the Earth-trailing orbit has several major advantages over near-Earth orbits. The principal advantage is the distance from Earth and its heat; this facilitates the extensive use of radiative cooling, which makes Spitzer's cryo-thermal design extremely efficient. The orbit also permits excellent sky viewing and observing efficiency. Spitzer is constraine...

Quasi-optical analysis of a far-infrared spatio-spectral space interferometer concept

“…Atmospheric attenuation of far-infrared radiation, and the difficulties involved in using large mirrors in space leads to the requirement of space-based interferometry. Furthermore, if we are to at least match the spectral resolution of single dish far infrared observatories such as Herschel [6,7], Spitzer [8] and SPICA [9], then a high resolution spectroscopic technique must be used in combination with the spatial interferometer. The technique selected for the FISICA study was Fourier transform spectroscopy (FTS), and when spatial and spectral methods are used together the technique is called double Fourier spatio-spectral interferometry [10].…”

Debris Disks in the Upper Scorpius Ob Association

“…Debris disks have been studied extensively over the entire sky using IRAS (Backman & Paresce 1993;Lagrange et al 2000;Rhee et al 2007) and in targeted regions using the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO; Habing et al 2001;Spangler et al 2001;. The Spitzer Space Telescope (Werner et al 2004) has expanded on these studies to produce a vast database of debris disks (e.g., Rieke et al 2005;Bryden et al 2006;Su et al 2006;Gautier et al 2007;Currie et al 2008a;Carpenter et al 2009, see also reviews by Werner et al 2006, Meyer et al 2007and Wyatt 2008 that encompass a broad range of spectral types (B-M stars), environments (clusters, associations, field stars), and ages (3 Myr to 10 Gyr). Comparison of these data to theoretical models have yielded insights on the planetesimal belts that produce the debris dust (Wyatt et al 2007b), the collisional history of planetesimal belts Wyatt et al 2007a;Löhne et al 2008) and the formation of planetary systems (Kenyon & Bromley 2008, and references therein).…”

History of infrared telescopes and astronomy

“…Fortunately, the development of very high performance infrared detector arrays allowed a mission with superb performance and that, like ISO, has yielded many science breakthroughs. The mission design is described by Gehrz et al [25], and early reviews of the science accomplished are provided by Werner et al [88] and Soifer et al [83].…”