Categories: Podcasts

Podcast: Infrared Astronomy

The James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2018 may be the first to be capable of detecting biomarker gasses in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets. When an exoplanet passes between its star and Earth, an event called a transit, light that has passed through the planet’s atmosphere can be detected from a vantage point near Earth. When light passes through the exoplanet’s atmosphere, some wavelengths are absorbed and others transmitted. By analyzing the transmitted light spectrum, astronomers can learn the composition of the planet’s atmosphere. Astrobiologists hope to find biomarker gasses indicating the metabolic waste products of life. The oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere is a waste product of photosynthesis in plants and bacteria. The Webb telescope may be capable of conducting this test for planets larger than Earth (super-earths) transiting small stars. Space telescopes capable of conducting such research on a larger scale have been delayed by budget cuts. Credit: NASA

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Today we continue our unofficial tour through the electromagnetic spectrum, stopping at the infrared spectrum – you feel it as heat. This section of the spectrum gives us our only clear view through dusty material to see newly forming planetary systems and shrouded supermassive black holes. And infrared lets us look out to the most distant regions of the observable universe, when the first building blocks of galaxies came together.

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Infrared Astronomy- Transcript and show notes.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/