With Hubble's
new facelift almost complete, and the successful launch of the Herschel and
Planck observatories last week, a golden age of astronomy is truly under way,
scientists say.
"I
don't think there's any question about that. We have the largest set of assets
in space for astronomers ever," said Jon Morse, NASA's Astrophysics
Division Director. "It really is a golden era to be a practicing
astronomer. It entices me to leave my desk job and go back to the field."
There are now
more than a dozen major observatories in space eyeballing everything from the
sun to planets around other stars to radiation from the dawn of time.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is getting its
fifth and final makeover. New instruments and repairs will give the 19-year-old
veteran a new lease on life. Meanwhile, the Herschel and Planck observatories
were launched into space last week by the European Space Agency. These
telescopes will expand on astronomers' abilities to detect objects in the
infrared and microwave parts of the spectrum, respectively.
"We're,
I think, going through a peak in our capabilities on orbit with refurbishing
Hubble, the number of other missions we have, and then with the launch of
Herschel/Planck," Morse told SPACE.com.
And it's
not just the sheer amount of technology in space. It's also the coverage the
telescopes give astronomers.
All
radiation -- from low-energy, long-wavelength radio waves to visible light to high-energy,
short-wavelength X-rays and gamma rays -- is part of the electromagnetic
spectrum. Different objects are best studied in different wavelengths, and
some of that radiation doesn't penetrate Earth's atmosphere and so can only be
studied from space.
"We
cover essentially the entire electromagnetic spectrum now, all the way from the
gamma rays out to the microwaves and everything in between," Morse said.
This capability allows astronomers to look at particular regions of the
universe in multiple wavelengths of light.
With
different telescopes looking at different parts of the spectrum, they can work
together to provide a clearer pictures of particular regions of space, for
example, clusters of galaxies.
"You
see very different things" this way, said Chandra
X-ray Observatory's Press Scientist Peter Edmonds. Chandra has teamed up
with both Hubble and the Spitzer Space telescope to do this kind of work. You
"get a much better picture" of the universe this way, Edmonds said.
Space also
offers clearer viewing not obstructed by Earth's atmosphere, so that even with
modest lenses and mirrors, space telescopes can spot pockets of faraway star
birth, or the formation stages of galaxies and mergers of black holes from the
farthest reaches of the cosmos. The impact of all these missions on astronomy
has already been a great one, Morse said.
"Without
question, it has revolutionized our understanding of astrophysics," he
said.
But with
enigmas such as dark matter and dark energy and questions like whether there
are other Earth-like worlds remaining to be solved, the host of space
telescopes — old and new — promise many great discoveries to come from the new
golden age.
It's an
exciting time to be an astronomer, both Edmonds and Morse said. Starting out as
an astronomer in this current era of space observatories can be compared to
starting out in the field of manned space travel in 1960s, Edmonds said.
"I
believe that the future of astrophysics is bright and that our best days are
yet to come," Morse said. "I have to say 'our best nights'," he added,
as any good astronomer would.
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