The Telescope System Instrumentation Program (TSIP) will leverage non-federal investment in large new ground-based telescopes.
The AASCs highest-priority recommendation in the moderate cost category for both space-and ground-based initiatives promotes not an instrument but a program, one that will fund instruments for the new generation of large telescopes that are being constructed at university and independent observatories. The Telescope System Instrumentation Program (TSIP) will leverage these investments by markedly improving the equipment that detects and analyzes the radiation reaching these telescopes. In particular, TSIP will assist the development of systems for adaptive optics, which continuously readjust the reflecting surface of a telescope, canceling the blurring effects of the atmosphere. Adaptive optics will allow a manyfold increase in the angular resolving power of all large telescopes. This improvement will give these telescopes an increased ability to study a host of phenomena. Among these are the atmospheres of the other planets in the solar system, the structure of protoplanetary disks around other stars, the behavior of matter in active galactic nuclei, the history of star formation in young galaxies, and the nature of the objects that produce mysterious bursts of gamma rays.
THE SINGLE APERTURE FAR INFRARED OBSERVATORY (SAFIR)WILL PROVIDE OUR MOST SENSITIVE EYE ON THE FAR-INFRARED FRONTIER
The Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) will enable infrared observations with about three times the angular resolution and 100 times the sensitivity of the HST. However, the NGST cannot observe infrared radiation with the longest wavelengths-the far-infrared domain of the spectrum. This spectral region is rich in information about stars and galaxies in the process of forming; brown dwarfs ("failed stars" that have too little mass to begin nuclear fusion); and ultraluminous, infrared-radiating galaxies. Although significant improvements in observations of the far- infrared domain will occur with the coming deployment of the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, the airborne Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, and the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory, longer-wavelength observations with greater sensitivity are needed. The recommended next step for observing the cosmos at far- infrared wavelengths is the space-borne Single Aperture Far Infrared (SAFIR) Observatory. SAFIR will include both a telescope with a mirror at least as large as that of the NGST and a set of cooled instruments. Its size and temperature will give it an angular precision and an ability to detect faint sources that will make it roughly a million times superior to existing instruments that observe the far-infrared spectral domain. Because the NGST will pioneer cost- effective development of space-borne telescopes with mirrors larger than the HST's, SAFIR can be designed and built more cheaply than the NGST.
Visit the official (CARMA) site
OTHER LONGER-WAVELENGTH TOOLS
The Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy and the South Pole Submillimeter-wave Telescope will be powerful tools for studying star-forming molecular clouds and other dusty parts of the universe, as well as clusters of galaxies.
Visit The South Pole Submillimeter-wave Telescope Site at Harvard
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