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Balloon-borne Telescope
A balloon-borne telescope is a type of airborne telescope, a sub-orbital astronomical telescope that is suspended below one or more stratospheric balloons, allowing it to be lifted above the lower, dense part of the Earth's atmosphere. This has the advantage of improving the resolution limit of the telescope at a much lower cost than for a space telescope. It also allows observation of frequency bands that are blocked by the atmosphere. Balloon-borne telescopes have the disadvantage of relatively low altitude and a flight time of only a few days. However, their maximum altitude of about 50 km is much higher than the limiting altitude of aircraft-borne telescopes such as the Kuiper Airborne Observatory and Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, which have a limiting altitude of 15 km. A few balloon-borne telescopes have crash landed, resulting in damage to, or destruction of the telescope. The balloon obscures the zenith from the telescope, but a very long ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skyhook Air 1957
Skyhook, sky hook or skyhooks may refer to: Fiction * 'Skyhooks' or 'Skyhooks II', parts 1 and 8 respectively of the Adventure Time Elements miniseries. * ''Sky Hook'', a Hugo-award nominated science fiction fanzine * ''Sky Hook'' (film), a 1999 Yugoslavian film * 'Sky hook', a mechanical device used to supposedly operate The Great Glass Elevator in Roald Dahl's children's book ''Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator''. * 'Sky-Hook', a device used in ''BioShock Infinite'' to ride Sky-Lines in Columbia and as a melee weapon * 'Sky hook', a "non-existent" item commonly requested in a construction industry '' Fool's errand'' Music *"Skyhook", a song by Dance Gavin Dance from their second studio album ''Dance Gavin Dance'' * Skyhooks (band), an Australian rock band Science * Skyhook (concept), an explanation of design complexity in the universe that does not build on lower, simpler layers Sports * Hook shot, variant, the signature shot of Basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Ab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BOOMERanG Experiment
In astronomy and observational cosmology, the BOOMERanG experiment (Balloon Observations Of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation And Geophysics) was an experiment which measured the cosmic microwave background radiation of a part of the sky during three sub-orbital (high-altitude) balloon flights. It was the first experiment to make large, high-fidelity images of the CMB temperature anisotropies, and is best known for the discovery in 2000 that the geometry of the universe is close to flat, with similar results from the competing MAXIMA experiment. By using a telescope which flew at over 42,000 meters high, it was possible to reduce the atmospheric absorption of microwaves to a minimum. This allowed massive cost reduction compared to a satellite probe, though only a tiny part of the sky could be scanned. The first was a test flight over North America in 1997. In the two subsequent flights in 1998 and 2003 the balloon was launched from McMurdo Station in the Antarctic. It was ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weak Gravitational Lensing
While the presence of any mass bends the path of light passing near it, this effect rarely produces the giant arcs and multiple images associated with strong gravitational lensing. Most lines of sight in the universe are thoroughly in the weak lensing regime, in which the deflection is impossible to detect in a single background source. However, even in these cases, the presence of the foreground mass can be detected, by way of a systematic alignment of background sources around the lensing mass. Weak gravitational lensing is thus an intrinsically statistical measurement, but it provides a way to measure the masses of astronomical objects without requiring assumptions about their composition or dynamical state. Methodology Gravitational lensing acts as a coordinate transformation that distorts the images of background objects (usually galaxies) near a foreground mass. The transformation can be split into two terms, the convergence and shear. The convergence term magnifie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Galaxy Cluster
A galaxy cluster, or a cluster of galaxies, is a structure that consists of anywhere from hundreds to thousands of galaxies that are bound together by gravity, with typical masses ranging from 1014 to 1015 solar masses. They are the second-largest known gravitationally bound structures in the universe after galaxy filaments and were believed to be the largest known structures in the universe until the 1980s, when superclusters were discovered. One of the key features of clusters is the intracluster medium (ICM). The ICM consists of heated gas between the galaxies and has a peak temperature between 2–15 keV that is dependent on the total mass of the cluster. Galaxy clusters should not be confused with ''galactic clusters'' (also known as open clusters), which are star clusters ''within'' galaxies, or with globular clusters, which typically orbit galaxies. Small aggregates of galaxies are referred to as galaxy groups rather than clusters of galaxies. The galaxy groups and c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dark Matter
Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. Dark matter is called "dark" because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation and is, therefore, difficult to detect. Various astrophysical observationsincluding gravitational effects which cannot be explained by currently accepted theories of gravity unless more matter is present than can be seenimply dark matter's presence. For this reason, most experts think that dark matter is abundant in the universe and has had a strong influence on its structure and evolution. The primary evidence for dark matter comes from calculations showing that many galaxies would behave quite differently if they did not contain a large amount of unseen matter. Some galaxies would not have formed at all and others would not move as they currently do. Other lines of evidence include observa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT)
The Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) is a highly stabilized, high-resolution telescope that operates in the stratosphere via NASA's superpressure balloon (SPB) system. At 40 km altitude above sea level, the Gridiron football, football-stadium-sized balloon carries SuperBIT (at 3500 lbs) to a suborbital environment above 99.2% of the Atmosphere of Earth, Earth's atmosphere in order to obtain space-quality imaging. As a research instrument, SuperBIT's primary science goal is to provide insight into the distribution of dark matter in galaxy clusters and throughout the Large-scale structure of the Cosmos, large-scale structure of the universe. As demonstrated by numerous test flights, the survey data generated by SuperBIT is expected to have similar quality and data collection efficiency as the Hubble Space Telescope while complementing surveys from other up-and-coming observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Vera C. Rubin O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spider (polarimeter)
Spider is a balloon-borne experiment designed to search for primordial gravitational waves imprinted on the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Measuring the strength of this signal puts limits on inflationary theory. The Spider instrument consists of six degree-resolution telescopes cooled to liquid Helium temperature (4 K) which observe at frequencies of 100 GHz, 150 GHz, and 280 GHz (corresponding to wavelengths of 3 mm, 2 mm, and 1.1 mm). Each telescope is coupled to a polarisation-sensitive transition-edge bolometer (TES) array cooled to 300 mK. Spider was the first instrument to successfully demonstrate time-domain multiplexed TES detectors in a space-like environment. At the time of the first flight over Antarctica in 2015, Spider was the most sensitive microwave instrument ever made. The primary science goals include: # characterization of the curl-free component of the CMB polarization on the largest scales # searching for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PoGOLite
PoGOLite (The Polarised Gamma-ray Observer) is a balloon-borne astroparticle physics experiment which is to measure polarisation in hard X-rays and soft gamma-rays. It is sensitive to photons with an energy range of 25-80 keV. PoGOLite contains 217 phoswich detector cells (PDC) which are surrounded by a ring of side anticoincidence shield (SAS) detectors. PoGOLite Pathfinder mission The pathfinder instrument containing 61 PDCs and 30 SAS detectors was scheduled to be launched from the Esrange facility in northern Sweden during summer 2011. The flight was to be the first westward circumpolar balloon flight in the northern hemisphere in 20 years and was expected to take 17–25 days. The main targets of the pathfinder experiment are the Crab Pulsar and the high-mass X-ray binary system Cygnus X-1, which are two of the brightest objects in the energy range of PoGOLite. The mission was launched at 1:57am Thursday 7 July 2011 (23h57 GMT Wednesday 6 July 2011) from Esrange, Sweden. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adaptive Optics
Adaptive optics (AO) is a technology used to improve the performance of optical systems by reducing the effect of incoming wavefront distortions by deforming a mirror in order to compensate for the distortion. It is used in astronomical telescopes and laser communication systems to remove the effects of atmospheric distortion, in microscopy, optical fabrication and in retinal imaging systems to reduce optical aberrations. Adaptive optics works by measuring the distortions in a wavefront and compensating for them with a device that corrects those errors such as a deformable mirror or a liquid crystal array. Adaptive optics should not be confused with active optics, which works on a longer timescale to correct the primary mirror geometry. Other methods can achieve resolving power exceeding the limit imposed by atmospheric distortion, such as speckle imaging, aperture synthesis, and lucky imaging, or by moving outside the atmosphere with space telescopes, such as the Hubble Sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sunrise (telescope)
The Sunrise balloon-borne solar observatory consists of a 1m aperture Gregory telescope, a UV filter imager, an imaging vector polarimeter, an image stabilization system and further infrastructure. The first science flight of Sunrise yielded high-quality data that reveal the structure, dynamics and evolution of solar convection, oscillations and magnetic fields at a resolution of around 100 km in the quiet Sun. Overview The strong absorption of UV radiation by the Earth's atmosphere makes it challenging to carry out ground-based observations at these wavelengths. A balloon mission reaching altitudes of above 30 km benefits from a reduction of UV absorption by 99%, making engineering solutions for the telescope easier. The launch site was in the arctic region to make uninterrupted observation of the Sun over several days possible. The telescope has a 1 metre primary mirror that directs the 1 kW of solar radiation to the first focal point where 99% of the radiation is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BLAST (telescope)
The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) is a submillimeter telescope that hangs from a high-altitude balloon. It has a 2-meter primary mirror that directs light into bolometer arrays operating at 250, 350, and 500 µm. These arrays were developed for the SPIRE instrument on the Herschel Space Observatory. The project is carried out by a multi-university consortium headed by the University of Pennsylvania and which also includes University of Toronto, Brown University, the University of Miami, the University of British Columbia, JPL, INAOE, and Cardiff University. The third flight of BLAST in Antarctica was a scientific success, but much of telescope was destroyed after landing. It has been rebuilt for a flight from Antarctica in the 2010-11 austral summer. This most recent flight of BLAST (aka BLAST-Pol) has a polarimeter to observe the polarized light from star forming cores. The light is polarized due to magnetic fields. It is thought that the m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
