Infrared Sky Surveys

Price, S. D.

doi:10.1007/s11214-008-9475-4

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 308 publications

(236 reference statements)

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“…Oort and Van de Hulst had been right: infrared astronomy was a highly competitive field (Harwit 2001, Low et.al. 2007, Price 2009. The Dutch and American proposals arrived around the same time at NASA headquarters.…”

Section: The Infrared Astronomical Satellitementioning

confidence: 99%

Space for Ambitions: The Dutch Space Program in Changing European and Transatlantic Contexts

Baneke¹

2014

Minerva

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Why would a small country like the Netherlands become active in space? The field was monopolized by large countries with large military establishments, especially in the early years of spaceflight. Nevertheless, the Netherlands established a space program in the late 1960s. In this paper I will analyze the backgrounds of Dutch space policy in international postwar politics, national industrial policy, and science. After the Second World War, European space activities were shaped by the interplay between transatlantic and European cooperation and competition, limited by American Cold War diplomacy. At the national level the Dutch space program was shaped firstly by two powerful companies, Philips electronics and Fokker Aircraft. As I will demonstrate, these two firms sought to gain crucial management skills as well as technological ones. Meanwhile, the nation's astronomers were able to capitalize on an advantageous confluence of political, economic and scientific ambitions to forward their own agenda. They succeeded in obtaining two of the most expensive scientific instruments ever built in the Netherlands: the Astronomical Netherlands Satellite (ANS, launched 1974) and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS, 1983). Both were joint Dutch-American missions, but the nature of the cooperation on each was very different, reflecting the changing relationship between America and Western Europe from the 1950s until the 1980s.In 1965, the Dutch astronomical community received a letter from the Ministry of Education and Sciences. The government had decided to fund the construction of a satellite; would the astronomers have any use for it? The result, launched in 1974, was the Astronomical Netherlands Satellite (ANS). Several years later, the same thing happened again. Almost without having to ask, the astronomers were provided with two of the most expensive scientific instruments ever built in the Netherlands, the only 'national' Dutch satellites. To understand why, one has to analyze international politics, small country diplomacy, industrial ambitions, and a remarkably efficient scientific community.Putting scientific instruments into space is an appealing idea for scientists, but realizing it requires an expensive infrastructure and access to strategically important technologies. Until recently, only national governments had the resources needed to sustain space programs. And even then, very few nations were able to acquire access to space on their own. Because of the possible military uses of satellites and launch vehicles (missiles), but also because of the high public visibility and prestige of space technology, spaceflight has always been shaped by international relations.During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union exploited space for strategic and diplomatic aims (MacDougall 1986;Logsdon 1996;Krige 2006b).In Western Europe, the Cold War was not the most important political context for spaceflight, however. Effectively shut out of direct competition with the superpowers, European countries fo...

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Section: The Infrared Astronomical Satellitementioning

confidence: 99%

Space for Ambitions: The Dutch Space Program in Changing European and Transatlantic Contexts

Baneke¹

2014

Minerva

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“…IRAS, 2MASS, DENIS, VISTA, CFHT, see Price 2009) and because Europe is also at the forefront of polar research. Two member states, France and Italy, have implemented and are successfully operating all year round a multi-disciplinary scientific station, Concordia, sited in the heart of Antarctica at Dome C. Other sites are currently operating or are under development on the Antarctic Plateau, namely, the Amundsen-Scott station at the South Pole, Dome A (Kunlun) and Dome F (Dome Fuji) exploited by scientists from the USA, China and Japan, respectively.…”

Section: Project Context and Conceptmentioning

confidence: 99%

A European vision for a “Polar Large Telescope” project

Abe

Epchtein

Ansorge³

et al. 2012

Proc. IAU

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The Polar Large Telescope (PLT) project is primarily aimed at undertaking large, wide band synoptic astronomical surveys in the infrared in order to provide critical data to the forthcoming generation of observational facilities such as ALMA, JWST, LSST and the E-ELT, and to complement the observations obtained with them. Sensitive thermal IR surveys beyond 2.3 μm cannot be carried out from any existing ground based observatory and the Antarctic Plateau is the only place on the ground where it can be envisaged, thanks to its unique atmospheric and environmental properties, such as the turbulence profile (image quality), the low opacity and the reduced thermal background emission of the sky. These unique conditions enable high angular resolution wide field surveys in the near thermal infrared (2.3-5 μm). This spectral range is particularly well suited to tackling key astrophysical questions such as: i) investigating the nature of the distant universe, the first generation of stars and the latest stages of stellar evolution, ii) understanding transient phenomena such as gamma ray-bursts and Type Ia supernovae, iii) increasing our knowledge of extra-solar planets. Further instruments may broaden the expected science outcomes of such a 2 -4 m class telescope especially for the 243 244 L. Abe et al. characterization of galaxies at very large distance to provide new clues in the mysteries of dark matter and energy. Efforts will be made to merge this project with other comparable projects within an international consortium.

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“…Of course, if we quite reasonably postulate that X is made of baryonic 4 matter emitting electromagnetic radiation, other, tighter bounds on its present-day distance may be derived from its electromagnetic direct detectability. The recently launched Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) (Wright et al 2010) will survey the entire sky in the mid-IR with far greater sensitivity than any previous all-sky IR surveys (Price 2009) like, e.g., that performed by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite 5 (IRAS) (Beichman 1987). Among the scientific goals of WISE there is also the detection of solitary brown dwarf-like bodies in the neighborhood of the solar system.…”

Section: Analytical Calculationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is it plausible to expect a close encounter of the Earth with a yet undiscovered astronomical object in the next few years?

Iorio¹

2010

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We analytically and numerically investigate the possibility that a still undiscovered body X, moving along an unbound hyperbolic path from outside the solar system, may penetrate its inner regions in the next few years posing a threat to the Earth. By conservatively using as initial position of X the lower bounds on the present‐day distance of X dynamically inferred from the gravitational perturbations induced by it on the orbital motions of the planets of the solar system, both the analyses show that, in order to reach the Earth’s orbit in the next 2 yr, X should move at a highly unrealistic speed , whatever its mass is. For example, by assuming for it a solar ( M ) or brown dwarf mass ( ), now at not less than kau (1 kau=1000 astronomical units), v would be of the order of and of the speed of light c, respectively. By assuming larger present‐day distances for X, on the basis of the lacking of direct observational evidences of electromagnetic origin for it, its speed would be even higher. Instead, the fastest solitary massive objects known so far, like hypervelocity stars (HVSs) and supernova remnants (SRs), travel at , having acquired so huge velocities in some of the most violent astrophysical phenomena like interactions with supermassive galactic black holes and supernova explosions. It turns out that the orbit of the Earth would not be macroscopically altered by a close (0.2 au) passage of such an ultrafast body X in the next 2 yr. On the contrary, our planet would be hurled into the space if a Sun‐sized body X would encounter it by moving at . On the other hand, this would imply that such a X should be now at just 20-30 au, contrary to all direct observational and indirect dynamical evidences

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Infrared Sky Surveys

Cited by 6 publications

References 308 publications

Space for Ambitions: The Dutch Space Program in Changing European and Transatlantic Contexts

Space for Ambitions: The Dutch Space Program in Changing European and Transatlantic Contexts

A European vision for a “Polar Large Telescope” project

Is it plausible to expect a close encounter of the Earth with a yet undiscovered astronomical object in the next few years?

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