Infrared pictures of astronomy objects are not very good looking comparing to the ones we get in visible light. There is no fine features visible and overall pictures look fuzzy. Why do we bother with them? Why do we launch infrared telescopes to space and spending so much money on them?
The answer is rather simple: some stuff in the Universe is invisible in wavelengths we call “light”. In fact most of the stuff in the Universe is invisible. Guesstimations (I love this word :-) tell us that only about 4% of all Universe matter and energy could possibly be detected with our current technology, the rest is so called dark matter and dark energy. And only a small fraction of those 4% can be detected in visible light.
Infrared pictures could show us stars before they are born for example. Some stars are hidden inside the dust clouds, so we can not see them in visible light, but can in infrared. Think of a “heat” when you think of infrared, because our body heat sensors can detect infrared light. You can feel a hot iron from the distance with your eyes closed, right? That’s what infrared telescopes do — they measure how much heat comes from objects in the Universe.
One more thing before we move to images: we can not see infrared with our eyes, so what are those colors on infrared pictures? They are artificial colors which have nothing to do with objects, telescope measures how much energy comes form the object and it is up to us to decide what to do with this data. For simplicity scientists very often convert it to pictures, choosing any color they like.
The first images and spectra obtained with the three Herschel instruments (HIFI, PACS and SPIRE). You can clearly see the artificial colors I mentioned above. Image credit: ESA.
Planetary nebula "Cat's Eye" NGC 6543 captured by PACS, one of the instruments on Herschel. Image credit: ESA.
Tags: astronomy, Astronomy News, Herschel, infrared, infrared astronomy, space, space news
