NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for
Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, will soon be
studying Neptune’s giant moon, Triton,
and following-up on Hubble’s recent
sighting of water plumes on Jupiter’s
moon Europa . According to recently
completed plans for the 2017 observing
campaign, about half of the research
time for SOFIA will run the gamut from
studies of planets to observations of
comets and asteroids orbiting other stars
and supermassive black holes in the
centers of galaxies beyond our own. The
other half will focus on star formation
and the interstellar medium, the areas of
dust and gas in the universe, including a
vast turbulent region encircling the
center of our Milky Way galaxy.
Figure 1a: SOFIA/FORCAST mid-infrared
image of the Milky Way Galaxy's nucleus
showing the Circumnuclear Ring of gas
and dust clouds orbiting a central
supermassive black hole. Figure 1b:
Hubble Space Telescope/Near Infrared
Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer
(NICMOS) near-infrared image showing
the same field of view with the same
scale and orientation as Figure 1a. At
this wavelength, opaque dust in the
plane of the Milky Way hides features
that are seen in the SOFIA image.
Credits: Figure 1a: NASA/DLR/USRA/DSI/
FORCAST Team/Lau et al. 2013; Figure
1b: NASA/HST/STScI/AURA
A total of 535 observing hours have been
awarded for SOFIA’s Science Cycle 5,
which runs from February 2017 through
January 2018, and the selected
programs span the entire field of
astronomy from planetary science to
extragalactic investigations. Triton, only
one-third of a light year from Earth, will
be one of the closest objects studied by
NASA’s flying observatory while the
farthest observation will study a
supermassive black hole approximately
12 billion light years away.
SOFIA is a is a joint program between
NASA and the German Aerospace Center
and is a Boeing 747SP jetliner modified
to carry a 100-inch diameter telescope
that uses eight instruments to study the
universe at infrared wavelengths that
cannot be detected from ground-based
observatories. Cycle 5 provides 455
research hours to U.S. programs and 80
hours to German programs.
“Four very highly rated programs were
selected to investigate the galactic
center region using the upGREAT high-
resolution far-infrared spectrometer,”
said Harold Yorke SOFIA Science Mission
Director of the Universities Space
Research Association.
“Three of those programs are aimed at
understanding the Central Molecular
Zone, a vast, turbulent region encircling
the Milky Way’s nucleus that contains a
large fraction of the galaxy’s dense
molecular clouds and star forming
regions, Yorke explained. “The fourth
program is focused on material
surrounding, and perhaps feeding into,
the supermassive black hole at the very
heart of our galaxy.”
To study celestial objects that are best
viewed from the Southern Hemisphere,
planning is underway for an eight-week
deployment to Christchurch, New
Zealand, from late June to late August
2017, employing three instruments: the
spectrometer known as the upgraded
German Receiver for Astronomy at
Terahertz Frequencies, or upGREAT, The
Faint Object infraRed Camera for the
SOFIA Telescope, or FORCAST, a
combined mid-infrared camera and
spectrometer, and the Far Infrared Field-
Imaging Line Spectrometer, or FIFI-LS , a
far-infrared imaging spectrometer.
Closer to home, the Echelon-Cross-
Echelle Spectrograph, or EXES, a mid-
infrared spectrometer, will take
advantage of that instrument’s great
sensitivity and high spectral resolution to
make an ambitious search for previously
unobserved molecules in the Orion star
forming region, looking for rare molecular
species like acetylene, ethylene, and
ethane. These observations will provide
information about the production of
organic compounds and water in a region
where stars and planets are currently
forming.
SOFIA’s High-resolution Airborne
Wideband Camera-plus, known as HAWC
+, a far-infrared polarimeter camera, now
being commissioned, is slated for a joint
project with the most powerful telescope
on Earth, the Atacama Large Millimeter/
submillimeter Array, ALMA, to
understand how the galaxy’s magnetic
fields resist the collapse of gas clouds
that form stars thereby affecting the star
formation process.
A challenging planetary science
investigation will use SOFIA to observe
Triton when it passes in front of a bright
background star in October 2017. This
would require a mini-deployment to the
U.S. East Coast where the shadow of
Triton will briefly be cast, allowing a look
at that moon’s thin atmosphere.
“This project is quite comparable to
SOFIA’s study of Pluto and its
atmosphere during a stellar occultation
observed from near New Zealand in
2015, and in fact was proposed by the
same investigator team,” Yorke said.
“This type of research demonstrates the
virtues of a mobile observatory that can
go wherever on Earth is required to view
transient celestial phenomena.”
SOFIA’s ability to change instruments
and adapt new technologies enables the
rapid development and deployment of
new sensors. To that end, NASA plans to
solicit proposals for SOFIA’s next
generation instrumentation in 2017.
SOFIA is a joint project of NASA and the
German Aerospace Center, DLR. NASA’s
Ames Research Center in California’s
Silicon Valley manages the SOFIA
program along with science and mission
operations in cooperation with the
Universities Space Research Association
headquartered in Columbia, Maryland,
and the German SOFIA Institute (DSI) at
the University of Stuttgart. The aircraft
is based at NASA Armstrong Flight
Research Center's Hangar 703, in
Palmdale, California.
Observe more about SOFIA, at:
http://www.nasa.gov/sofia • http://
www.dlr.de/en/sofia.. From
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