NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA): January 14, 2008
http://www.sofia.usra.edu/
Written and Photography by Dennis Gonzales

On Monday, January 14, I toured NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) Aircraft at the Flight Operations Building at Moffett Airfield. Only employees and their families were invited to see the aircraft. This was a rare opportunity to see the plane, board it and compare it to its predecessor, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, a C-141 aircraft outfitted with a 36-inch telescope onboard. This was the first aircraft I visited on a windy, cold tarmac. The plane is the QSRA, "Quiet Short-haul Research Aircraft" - a NASA research aircraft stationed at Ames. The QSRA was used to study how to make a quiet aircraft that could take off within short distances. The Quiet Short-Haul Research Aircraft (QSRA) was built by Boeing under contract to NASA. The inside of the aircraft had the scent of an aging plane with old equipment but with a historic past. It operated until 1995 and is now decommissioned.

After visiting the Kuiper Aircraft, I stood in a long line from the Flight Operations Building leading out to the SOFIA. It took approximately 30 minutes to get on board the aircraft. NASA and the DLR, German Aerospace Center, are working together to create SOFIA - a Boeing 747SP aircraft modified by L-3 Communications Integrated Systems to accommodate a 2.5 meter reflecting telescope. SOFIA will be the largest airborne observatory in the world, and will make observations that are impossible for even the largest and highest of ground-based telescopes. SOFIA will collect and study light generated by cosmic objects across the widest wavelength range of any observatory, from 0.3 microns to 1.6 millimeters, across the visible, infrared and sub-millimeter portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Because infrared energy is absorbed by atmospheric water vapor, astronomers must put telescopes aboard high-flying airplanes, balloons, or orbiting satellites-anything that gets above most of the atmosphere-to detect infrared emissions from cosmic objects.




Image above: The visible light (left) and infrared (right) images of the constellation Orion shown here are of the exact same area. These images dramatically illustrate how features that cannot be seen in visible light show up very brightly in the infrared. (Credits: Visible light image: Akira Fujii; Infrared image: Infrared Astronomical Satellite )

Visible light - the light you see with your eyes - reveals only a part of the universe. Compare a photograph of the Orion constellation taken in visible light (Right image) with the same area (Left image) photographed in infrared light, also known as heat or thermal energy. The infrared image shows the enormous clouds of gas and dust, invisible to the unaided eye that fills this region of the sky. It reveals hot, dense regions embedded within the larger clouds where young stars are being born.

To get a complete picture of the universe, astronomers have to observe the cosmos in light from all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. In addition to visible light, cosmic objects emit energy - radio waves, infrared, ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma rays - that is invisible to our eyes. SOFIA will observe the visible and the infrared universe.

The SOFIA team was onboard to take questions and photo opportunities. The following pictures give you an idea of the inside of the fuselage, equipment and the telescope.

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