Related papers: Probing the Invisible Universe: The Case for Far-I…
Although far-IR -- mm-wave astronomy has now been developing for several decades, access to this portion of the spectrum remains difficult and limited. Relative to their optical-wavelength counterparts, the submillimeter observatories are…
Far-infrared astronomy has advanced rapidly since its inception in the late 1950's, driven by a maturing technology base and an expanding community of researchers. This advancement has shown that observations at far-infrared wavelengths are…
Observations at far-infrared and submillimeter wavelengths promise to revolutionize the study of high redshift galaxies and AGN by providing a unique probe of the conditions within heavily extinguished regions of star formation and nuclear…
The first unbiased surveys for high-redshift galaxies in the submillimeter (submm) and far-infrared (FIR) wavebands have been made over the last two years. When combined with the intensity of extragalactic background radiation in the same…
One of the major goals of observational cosmology is to acquire empirical data that has the diagnostic power to develop the theoretical modelling of the high-redshift universe, ultimately leading to an accurate understanding of the…
A major goal of modern astrophysics is to understand the processes by which the universe evolved from its initial simplicity, as seen in measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background, to the universe we see today, with complexity on all…
The quest for other habitable worlds and the search for life among them are major goals of modern astronomy. One way to make progress towards these goals is to obtain high-quality spectra of a large number of exoplanets over a broad range…
The Single Aperture Far-InfraRed (SAFIR) Observatory's science goals are driven by the fact that the earliest stages of almost all phenomena in the universe are shrouded in absorption by and emission from cool dust and gas that emits…
A new all-sky visible and Near-InfraRed (NIR) space astrometry mission with a wavelength cutoff in the K-band is not just focused on a single or small number of key science cases. Instead, it is extremely broad, answering key science…
The construction of the James Webb Space Telescope has brought attention to infrared astronomy and cosmology. The potential information about our universe to be gained by this mission and future infrared telescopes is staggering, but…
Half of the energy ever emitted by stars and accreting objects comes to us in the FIR waveband and has yet to be properly explored. We propose a powerful Far-InfraRed Interferometer mission, FIRI, to carry out high-resolution imaging…
To understand the cosmic history of element synthesis it will be important to obtain extinction-free measures of the heavy element contents of high-redshift objects and to chart two monumental events: the collapse of the first metal-free…
The far-infrared (FIR) regime is one of the few wavelength ranges where no astronomical data with sub-arcsecond spatial resolution exist. Neither of the medium-term satellite projects like SPICA, Millimetron nor O.S.T. will resolve this…
We report results of a recently-completed pre-Formulation Phase study of SPIRIT, a candidate NASA Origins Probe mission. SPIRIT is a spatial and spectral interferometer with an operating wavelength range 25 - 400 microns. SPIRIT will…
The FIR/submm window is amongst the least explored spectral regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is, however, a key to study the general properties of the interstellar medium of galaxies, as it contains important spectral line…
By providing sensitive sub-arcsecond images and integral field spectroscopy in the 25 - 400 micron wavelength range, a far-IR interferometer will revolutionize our understanding of planetary system formation, reveal otherwise-undetectable…
Interferometry has brought many new constraints in optical astronomy in the recent years. A major leap in this field is the opening of large interferometric facilities like the Very Large Telescope Interferometer and the Keck Interferometer…
So far, high resolution techniques on the one hand provide morphological information on bright nearby objects. On the other hand, telescopes with large collecting areas allow us to detect very faint and distant objects, but not to obtain a…
Far-infrared (FIR) surveys are critical to probing the co-evolution of black holes and galaxies, since of order half the light from accreting black holes and active star formation is emitted in the rest-frame infrared over $0.5\lesssim z…
A tremendous amount of radiation is emitted by the Interstellar Medium in the mid- and far-infrared (3-500 {\mu}m) that represents the majority of the light emitted by a galaxy. In this article we motivate ISM studies in the infrared and…