The Infrared Sky
Abstract
The infrared sky from space is the sum of a cosmic signal from galaxies, quasars, and perhaps more exotic sources; and foregrounds from the Milky Way and from the Solar System. At a distance of 1 AU from the Sun, the foreground from interplanetary dust is very bright between 5 and 100 microns, but ``very bright'' is still several million times fainter than the background produced by ground-based telescopes. In the near infrared 1-2.2 micron range the space infrared sky is a thousand times fainter than the OH nightglow from the Earth's atmosphere. As a result of these advantages, wide-field imaging from space in the infrared can be an incredibly sensitive method to study the Universe.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0409094,
title = {The Infrared Sky},
author = {E. L. Wright},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0409094},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
9 pages Latex with 7 included figures. Paper presented at the Widefield Imaging from Space workshop in May, 2004