Ch 06-05 Space Telescopes

• Why to observe from space?
   
  
   
• Optical and infrared (OIR)
  
  [HST], [Spitzer], [Sofia] [JWST]
   
• Gamma-ray and X-ray
  
  [Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) and EGRET]
  
  
  [Fermi space telescope and LAT]
  
  
  [CGRO/COMPTEL, a pioneer of Compton telescopes in 1990s, and the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI), an effort of developing the next-generation compact Compton telescopes, which is an NASA SMEX mission to launch in 2027.]
  
  
  [The Gamma-ray Transients Monitor (GTM) to fly on Formosat-8B. The launch is expected in 2026.]
  
  
  [Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), 1995/12 ~ 2012/01]
  [X-ray non-focusing imaging: Collimator, Rotation Modulation Collimator (RMC), Coded Masks]
  
  
  [SPI on board INTEGRAL, launched on Oct. 17, 2002. Coded-mask imaging for photon energy lower than 150 keV or so, and Compton imaging for photons with higher energies.]
  
  
  [X-ray focusing imaging; Wolter mirrors]
  
  
  [Chandra (0.1-10 keV), XMM-Newton (0.1-12 keV) and NuSTAR (10-40 keV)]
  Many astronomical space missions, particularly of high-energy astronomy, can be found at GSFC/NASA
   
• There are many other space telescopes for specific scientific purposes, e.g., SWIFT for GRB monitoring, SDO and SOHO for observing the Sun, Kepler and TESS for finding exoplanets, GAIA for accurately measuring 3-dimensional distribution of stars in our galaxy, Euclid (some first images) for exploring the dark universe, etc.
   
• CubeSat is also a new trend of space astronomy observation.
  
  [Some on-going and proposed astronomical CubeSat missions (Shkolnik 2018, Nature Astronomy, 2, 374)]
   
• Long base lines are also feasible in space and wanted by, e.g., low frequency GW detection and radio interferometry.
  
  [Orbits of ESA's eLISA mission, to launch in 2034.]