Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-tn8tq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-04T10:23:13.623Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Science Potential of Far-IR/Sub-mm Interferometry and Concepts for the SPIRIT and SPECS Missions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2016

David Leisawitz
Affiliation:
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The FIR/SMM region is unique in the electromagnetic spectrum in its potential for vast increases in sensitivity and angular resolution, and, as a result, information vital to our understanding of the evolution of structure in the universe. About half of the luminosity in the universe is emitted in the far infrared. Evidence for this can be found both in the spectra of individual galaxies (Trentham et al. 1999) and in the cosmic FIR/SMM background found by COBE (Hauser et al. 1998; Fixsen et al. 1998; Dwek et al. 1998). JCMT/SCUBA observations suggest that “a large population of luminous, strongly obscured sources at redshifts ≲5 is missing from optical surveys” and could account for the background radiation (Blain et al. 1999). Future FIR/SMM measurements of these sources have the potential to reveal the luminosity history of the universe and will provide insight into the processes of galaxy and star formation and galaxy evolution.

Type
Prospects for High Angular Resolution Instrumentation
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of the Pacific 2001 

References

Blain, A.W., Smail, I., Ivison, R.J. & Kneib, J.-P. 1999, MNRAS, 302, 632.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dwek, E., et al. 1998, ApJ, 508, 106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fixsen, D. J., et al. 1998, ApJ, 508, 123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harwit, M., Neufeld, D. A., Melnick, G. J. & Kaufman, M. 1998, ApJ, 497, L105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hauser, M. G., et al. 1998, ApJ, 508, 25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leisawitz, D., et al. 2000, in Proc. SPIE, 4013, 36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mather, J. C., et al. 2000, Rev. Sci. Instr., submitted (astro-ph/9812454).Google Scholar
Neufeld, D. A. 1998, in “After the Dark Ages: When Galaxies Were Young,” ed. Holt, S. S. & Smith, E. P., AIP Conf. Proc, 470, 414.Google Scholar
Shao, M., et al. 2000, in Proc. SPIE, 4006, 772.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trentham, N., Kormendy, J. & Sanders, D. B. 1999, AJ, 117, 2152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voit, M. 1992, ApJ, 339, 495.CrossRefGoogle Scholar