The Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) mission
Citations Over TimeTop 1% of 1984 papers
Abstract
The Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) consists of a spacecraft and a liquid helium cryostat that contains a cooled IR telescope. The telescope's focal plane assembly is cooled to less than 3 K, and contains 62 IR detectors in the survey array which are arranged so that every source crossing the field of view can be seen by at least two detectors in each of four wavelength bands. The satellite was launched into a 900 km-altitude near-polar orbit, and its cryogenic helium supply was exhausted on November 22, 1983. By mission's end, 72 percent of the sky had been observed with three or more hours-confirming scans, and 95 percent with two or more hours-confirming scans. About 2000 stars detected at 12 and 25 microns early in the mission, and identified in the SAO (1966) catalog, have a positional uncertainty ellipse whose axes are 45 x 9 arcsec for an hours-confirmed source.
Related Papers
- → The IRTS (Infrared Telescope in Space) Mission(1996)78 cited
- → Infrared Telescope in Space (IRTS) mission(1996)2 cited
- → <title>Cryogenic infrared imaging beryllium telescope for Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS)</title>(1983)2 cited
- Low-background air-infrared telescope for balloon-borne infrared astronomy(1974)
- → The Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF)(1988)