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Science 21 February 1986:
Vol. 231. no. 4740, pp. 807 - 814
DOI: 10.1126/science.231.4740.807
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Articles

Infrared Astronomy After IRAS

G. H. RIEKE 1, M. W. WERNER 2, R. I. THOMPSON 1, E. E. BECKLIN 3, W. F. HOFFMANN 1, J. R. HOUCK 4, F. J. LOW 1, W. A. STEIN 5, and F. C. WITTEBORN 2

1 Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, Tucson 85721.
2 NASA Ames Research Center, Moffet Field, CA 94305.
3 Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Honolulu 96822.
4 Department of Astronomy, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14835.
5 Department of Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55455.

The 250,000 sources in the recently issued Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) all-sky infrared catalog are a challenge to astronomy. Many of these sources will be studied with existing and planned ground-based and airborne telescopes, but many others can no longer even be detected now that IRAS has ceased to operate. As anticipated by advisory panels of the National Academy of Sciences for a decade, study of the IRAS sources will require the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), a cooled, pointed telescope in space. This instrument may be the key to our understanding of cosmic birth—the formation of planets, stars, galaxies, active galactic nuclei, and quasars. Compared with IRAS and existing telescopes, SIRTF's power derives from a thousandfold gain in sensitivity over five octaves of the spectrum.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Astronomical Imaging with Infrared Array Detectors.
I. GATLEY, D. L. DEPOY, and A. M. FOWLER (1988)
Science 242, 1264-1270
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