Galaxy formation and evolution
The study of galaxy formation and evolution is concerned with the processes that formed a heterogeneous universe from a homogeneous beginning, the formation of the first galaxies, the way galaxies change over time, the processes that have generated the variety of structures observed in nearby galaxies. Galaxy formation is hypothesized to occur from structure formation theories, as a result of tiny quantum fluctuations in the aftermath of the Big Bang; the simplest model in general agreement with observed phenomena is the Lambda-CDM model—that is, that clustering and merging allows galaxies to accumulate mass, determining both their shape and structure. Because of the inability to conduct experiments in outer space, the only way to “test” theories and models of galaxy evolution is to compare them with observations. Explanations for how galaxies formed and evolved must be able to predict the observed properties and types of galaxies. Edwin Hubble created the first galaxy classification scheme known as the Hubble tuning-fork diagram.
It partitioned galaxies into ellipticals, normal spirals, barred spirals, irregulars. These galaxy types exhibit the following properties which can be explained by current galaxy evolution theories: Many of the properties of galaxies indicate that there are fundamentally two types of galaxies; these groups divide into blue star-forming galaxies that are more like spiral types, red non-star forming galaxies that are more like elliptical galaxies. Spiral galaxies are quite thin and rotate fast, while the stars in elliptical galaxies have randomly-oriented orbits; the majority of giant galaxies contain a supermassive black hole in their centers, ranging in mass from millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun. The black hole mass is tied to the host galaxy spheroid mass. Metallicity has a positive correlation with the absolute magnitude of a galaxy. There is a common misconception that Hubble believed incorrectly that the tuning fork diagram described an evolutionary sequence for galaxies, from elliptical galaxies through lenticulars to spiral galaxies.
This is not the case. Astronomers now believe that disk galaxies formed first evolved into elliptical galaxies through galaxy mergers. Current models predict that the majority of mass in galaxies is made up of dark matter, a substance, not directly observable, might not interact through any means except gravity; this observation arises because galaxies could not have formed as they have, or rotate as they are seen to, unless they contain far more mass than can be directly observed. The earliest stage in the evolution of galaxies is the formation; when a galaxy forms, it has a disk shape and is called a spiral galaxy due to spiral-like "arm" structures located on the disk. There are different theories on how these disk-like distributions of stars develop from a cloud of matter: however, at present, none of them predicts the results of observation. Olin Eggen, Donald Lynden-Bell, Allan Sandage in 1962, proposed a theory that disk galaxies form through a monolithic collapse of a large gas cloud.
The distribution of matter in the early universe was in clumps that consisted of dark matter. These clumps interacted gravitationally, putting tidal torques on each other that acted to give them some angular momentum; as the baryonic matter cooled, it contracted toward the center. With angular momentum conserved, the matter near the center speeds up its rotation. Like a spinning ball of pizza dough, the matter forms into a tight disk. Once the disk cools, the gas is not gravitationally stable, so it cannot remain a singular homogeneous cloud, it breaks, these smaller clouds of gas form stars. Since the dark matter does not dissipate as it only interacts gravitationally, it remains distributed outside the disk in what is known as the dark halo. Observations show that there are stars located outside the disk, which does not quite fit the "pizza dough" model, it was first proposed by Leonard Searle and Robert Zinn that galaxies form by the coalescence of smaller progenitors. Known as a top-down formation scenario, this theory is quite simple yet no longer accepted.
More recent theories include the clustering of dark matter halos in the bottom-up process. Instead of large gas clouds collapsing to form a galaxy in which the gas breaks up into smaller clouds, it is proposed that matter started out in these “smaller” clumps, many of these clumps merged to form galaxies, which were drawn by gravitation to form galaxy clusters; this still results in disk-like distributions of baryonic matter with dark matter forming the halo for all the same reasons as in the top-down theory. Models using this sort of process predict more small galaxies than large ones, which matches observations. Astronomers do not know what process stops the contraction. In fact, theories of disk galaxy formation are not successful at producing the rotation speed and size of disk galaxies, it has been suggested that the radiation from bright newly formed stars, or from an active galactic nucleus can slow the contraction of a forming disk. It has been suggested that the dark matter halo can pull the galaxy, thus stopping disk contraction.
The Lambda-CDM model is a cosmological model that explains the formation of the universe after the Big Bang. It is a simple model that predicts many properties observed in the universe, including the relative frequency of different galaxy types.
Space telescope
A space telescope or space observatory is an instrument located in outer space to observe distant planets and other astronomical objects. Space telescopes avoid many of the problems of ground-based observatories, such as light pollution and distortion of electromagnetic radiation. In addition, ultraviolet frequencies, X-rays and gamma rays are blocked by the Earth's atmosphere, so they can only be observed from space. Theorized by Lyman Spitzer in 1946, the first operational space telescopes were the American Orbiting Astronomical Observatory OAO-2 launched in 1968 and the Soviet Orion 1 ultraviolet telescope aboard space station Salyut 1 in 1971. Space telescopes are distinct from other imaging satellites pointed toward Earth for purposes of espionage, weather analysis and other types of information gathering. Wilhelm Beer and Johann Heinrich Mädler in 1837 discussed the advantages of an observatory on the Moon. In 1946, American theoretical astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer proposed a telescope in space, 11 years before the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik 1.
Spitzer's proposal called for a large telescope. After lobbying in the 1960s and 70s for such a system to be built, Spitzer's vision materialized into the Hubble Space Telescope, launched on April 24, 1990 by the Space Shuttle Discovery. Performing astronomy from ground-based observatories on Earth is limited by the filtering and distortion of electromagnetic radiation due to the atmosphere; some terrestrial telescopes can reduce atmospheric effects with adaptive optics. A telescope orbiting Earth outside the atmosphere is subject neither to twinkling nor to light pollution from artificial light sources on Earth; as a result, the angular resolution of space telescopes is much smaller than a ground-based telescope with a similar aperture. Space-based astronomy is more important for frequency ranges which are outside the optical window and the radio window, the only two wavelength ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum that are not attenuated by the atmosphere. For example, X-ray astronomy is nearly impossible when done from Earth, has reached its current importance in astronomy only due to orbiting X-ray telescopes such as the Chandra observatory and the XMM-Newton observatory.
Infrared and ultraviolet are largely blocked. However, all these advantages do come with a price. Space telescopes are much more expensive to build than ground-based telescopes. Due to their location, space telescopes are extremely difficult to maintain; the Hubble Space Telescope was serviced by the Space Shuttle while many other space telescopes cannot be serviced at all. Space observatories can be divided into two classes: missions which map the entire sky, observatories which focus on selected astronomical objects or parts of the sky. Satellites have been launched and operated by NASA, ISRO, ESA, Japanese Space Agency and the Soviet space program succeeded by Roskosmos of Russia; as of 2018, many space observatories have completed their missions, while others continue operating on extended time. However, the availability of space telescopes and observatories in the future is threatened due to delays and budget cuts. While future space observatories are planned by NASA, JAXA and the China National Space Administration, scientists fear that there would be gaps in coverage that would not be covered by future projects and this would affect research in fundamental science.
Space observatories portal Airborne observatory Earth observation satellite List of telescope types Observatory Timeline of artificial satellites and space probes Timeline of telescopes and observing technology Ultraviolet astronomy X-ray astronomy satellite Neil English: Space Telescopes - Capturing the Rays of the Electromagnetic Spectrum. Springer, Cham 2017, ISBN 978-3-319-27812-4
Herschel Space Observatory
The Herschel Space Observatory was a space observatory built and operated by the European Space Agency. It was active from 2009 to 2013, was the largest infrared telescope launched, carrying a 3.5-metre mirror and instruments sensitive to the far infrared and submillimetre wavebands. Herschel was the fourth and final cornerstone mission in the Horizon 2000 programme, following SOHO/Cluster II, XMM-Newton and Rosetta. NASA is a partner in the Herschel mission, with US participants contributing to the mission; the observatory was carried into orbit in May 2009, reaching the second Lagrangian point of the Earth–Sun system, 1,500,000 kilometres from Earth, about two months later. Herschel is named after Sir William Herschel, the discoverer of the infrared spectrum and planet Uranus, his sister and collaborator Caroline Herschel; the observatory was capable of seeing the dustiest objects in space. The observatory sifted through star-forming clouds—the "slow cookers" of star ingredients—to trace the path by which life-forming molecules, such as water, form.
The telescope's lifespan was governed by the amount of coolant available for its instruments. At the time of its launch, operations were estimated to last 3.5 years. It continued to operate until 29 April 2013 15:20 UTC. In 1982 the Far Infrared and Sub-millimetre Telescope was proposed to ESA; the ESA long-term policy-plan "Horizon 2000", produced in 1984, called for a High Throughput Heterodyne Spectroscopy mission as one of its cornerstone missions. In 1986, FIRST was adopted as this cornerstone mission, it was selected for implementation in 1993, following an industrial study in 1992–1993. The mission concept was redesigned from Earth-orbit to the Lagrangian point L2, in light of experience gained from the Infrared Space Observatory. In 2000, FIRST was renamed Herschel. After being put out to tender in 2000, industrial activities began in 2001. Herschel was launched in 2009; as of 2010, the Herschel mission is estimated to cost €1,100 million. This figure includes spacecraft and payload and mission expenses, science operations.
Herschel specialised in collecting light from objects in the Solar System as well as the Milky Way and extragalactic objects billions of light-years away, such as newborn galaxies, was charged with four primary areas of investigation: Galaxy formation in the early universe and the evolution of galaxies. During the mission, Herschel "made over 35,000 scientific observations" and "amass more than 25,000 hours' worth of science data from about 600 different observing programs"; the mission involved the first space observatory to cover the full far infrared and submillimetre waveband. At 3.5 metres wide, Herschel carried the largest optical telescope deployed in space. It was made not from sintered silicon carbide; the mirror's blank was manufactured by Boostec in France. The light reflected by the mirror was focused onto three instruments, whose detectors were kept at temperatures below 2 K; the instruments were cooled with over 2,300 litres of liquid helium, boiling away in a near vacuum at a temperature of 1.4 K.
The supply of helium on board the spacecraft was a fundamental limit to the operational lifetime of the space observatory. Herschel carried three detectors: PACS An imaging camera and low-resolution spectrometer covering wavelengths from 55 to 210 micrometres; the spectrometer had a spectral resolution between R=1000 and R=5000 and was able to detect signals as weak as −63 dB. It operated as an integral field spectrograph, combining spectral resolution; the imaging camera was able to image in two bands with a detection limit of a few millijanskys. SPIRE An imaging camera and low-resolution spectrometer covering 194 to 672 micrometre wavelength; the spectrometer had a resolution between R=40 and R=1000 at a wavelength of 250 micrometres and was able to image point sources with brightnesses around 100 millijanskys and extended sources with brightnesses of around 500 mJy. The imaging camera had three bands, centred at 250, 350 and 500 micrometres, each with 139, 88 and 43 pixels respectively, it was able to detect point sources with brightness above 2 mJy and between 4 and 9 mJy for extended sources.
A prototype of the SPIRE imaging camera flew on the BLAST high-altitude balloon. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. developed and built the "spider web" bolometers for this instrument, 40 times more sensitive than previous versions. The Herschel-SPIRE instrument was built by an international consortium comprising more than 18 institutes from eight countries, of which Cardiff University was the lead institute. HIFI
ArXiv
ArXiv is a repository of electronic preprints approved for posting after moderation, but not full peer review. It consists of scientific papers in the fields of mathematics, astronomy, electrical engineering, computer science, quantitative biology, mathematical finance and economics, which can be accessed online. In many fields of mathematics and physics all scientific papers are self-archived on the arXiv repository. Begun on August 14, 1991, arXiv.org passed the half-million-article milestone on October 3, 2008, had hit a million by the end of 2014. By October 2016 the submission rate had grown to more than 10,000 per month. ArXiv was made possible by the compact TeX file format, which allowed scientific papers to be transmitted over the Internet and rendered client-side. Around 1990, Joanne Cohn began emailing physics preprints to colleagues as TeX files, but the number of papers being sent soon filled mailboxes to capacity. Paul Ginsparg recognized the need for central storage, in August 1991 he created a central repository mailbox stored at the Los Alamos National Laboratory which could be accessed from any computer.
Additional modes of access were soon added: FTP in 1991, Gopher in 1992, the World Wide Web in 1993. The term e-print was adopted to describe the articles, it began as a physics archive, called the LANL preprint archive, but soon expanded to include astronomy, computer science, quantitative biology and, most statistics. Its original domain name was xxx.lanl.gov. Due to LANL's lack of interest in the expanding technology, in 2001 Ginsparg changed institutions to Cornell University and changed the name of the repository to arXiv.org. It is now hosted principally with eight mirrors around the world, its existence was one of the precipitating factors that led to the current movement in scientific publishing known as open access. Mathematicians and scientists upload their papers to arXiv.org for worldwide access and sometimes for reviews before they are published in peer-reviewed journals. Ginsparg was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2002 for his establishment of arXiv; the annual budget for arXiv is $826,000 for 2013 to 2017, funded jointly by Cornell University Library, the Simons Foundation and annual fee income from member institutions.
This model arose in 2010, when Cornell sought to broaden the financial funding of the project by asking institutions to make annual voluntary contributions based on the amount of download usage by each institution. Each member institution pledges a five-year funding commitment to support arXiv. Based on institutional usage ranking, the annual fees are set in four tiers from $1,000 to $4,400. Cornell's goal is to raise at least $504,000 per year through membership fees generated by 220 institutions. In September 2011, Cornell University Library took overall administrative and financial responsibility for arXiv's operation and development. Ginsparg was quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education as saying it "was supposed to be a three-hour tour, not a life sentence". However, Ginsparg remains on the arXiv Scientific Advisory Board and on the arXiv Physics Advisory Committee. Although arXiv is not peer reviewed, a collection of moderators for each area review the submissions; the lists of moderators for many sections of arXiv are publicly available, but moderators for most of the physics sections remain unlisted.
Additionally, an "endorsement" system was introduced in 2004 as part of an effort to ensure content is relevant and of interest to current research in the specified disciplines. Under the system, for categories that use it, an author must be endorsed by an established arXiv author before being allowed to submit papers to those categories. Endorsers are not asked to review the paper for errors, but to check whether the paper is appropriate for the intended subject area. New authors from recognized academic institutions receive automatic endorsement, which in practice means that they do not need to deal with the endorsement system at all. However, the endorsement system has attracted criticism for restricting scientific inquiry. A majority of the e-prints are submitted to journals for publication, but some work, including some influential papers, remain purely as e-prints and are never published in a peer-reviewed journal. A well-known example of the latter is an outline of a proof of Thurston's geometrization conjecture, including the Poincaré conjecture as a particular case, uploaded by Grigori Perelman in November 2002.
Perelman appears content to forgo the traditional peer-reviewed journal process, stating: "If anybody is interested in my way of solving the problem, it's all there – let them go and read about it". Despite this non-traditional method of publication, other mathematicians recognized this work by offering the Fields Medal and Clay Mathematics Millennium Prizes to Perelman, both of which he refused. Papers can be submitted in any of several formats, including LaTeX, PDF printed from a word processor other than TeX or LaTeX; the submission is rejected by the arXiv software if generating the final PDF file fails, if any image file is too large, or if the total size of the submission is too large. ArXiv now allows one to store and modify an incomplete submission, only finalize the submission when ready; the time stamp on the article is set. The standard access route is through one of several mirrors. Sev
Parsec
The parsec is a unit of length used to measure large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System. A parsec is defined as the distance at which one astronomical unit subtends an angle of one arcsecond, which corresponds to 648000/π astronomical units. One parsec is equal to 31 trillion kilometres or 19 trillion miles; the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is about 1.3 parsecs from the Sun. Most of the stars visible to the unaided eye in the night sky are within 500 parsecs of the Sun; the parsec unit was first suggested in 1913 by the British astronomer Herbert Hall Turner. Named as a portmanteau of the parallax of one arcsecond, it was defined to make calculations of astronomical distances from only their raw observational data quick and easy for astronomers. For this reason, it is the unit preferred in astronomy and astrophysics, though the light-year remains prominent in popular science texts and common usage. Although parsecs are used for the shorter distances within the Milky Way, multiples of parsecs are required for the larger scales in the universe, including kiloparsecs for the more distant objects within and around the Milky Way, megaparsecs for mid-distance galaxies, gigaparsecs for many quasars and the most distant galaxies.
In August 2015, the IAU passed Resolution B2, which, as part of the definition of a standardized absolute and apparent bolometric magnitude scale, mentioned an existing explicit definition of the parsec as 648000/π astronomical units, or 3.08567758149137×1016 metres. This corresponds to the small-angle definition of the parsec found in many contemporary astronomical references; the parsec is defined as being equal to the length of the longer leg of an elongated imaginary right triangle in space. The two dimensions on which this triangle is based are its shorter leg, of length one astronomical unit, the subtended angle of the vertex opposite that leg, measuring one arc second. Applying the rules of trigonometry to these two values, the unit length of the other leg of the triangle can be derived. One of the oldest methods used by astronomers to calculate the distance to a star is to record the difference in angle between two measurements of the position of the star in the sky; the first measurement is taken from the Earth on one side of the Sun, the second is taken half a year when the Earth is on the opposite side of the Sun.
The distance between the two positions of the Earth when the two measurements were taken is twice the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The difference in angle between the two measurements is twice the parallax angle, formed by lines from the Sun and Earth to the star at the distant vertex; the distance to the star could be calculated using trigonometry. The first successful published direct measurements of an object at interstellar distances were undertaken by German astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel in 1838, who used this approach to calculate the 3.5-parsec distance of 61 Cygni. The parallax of a star is defined as half of the angular distance that a star appears to move relative to the celestial sphere as Earth orbits the Sun. Equivalently, it is the subtended angle, from that star's perspective, of the semimajor axis of the Earth's orbit; the star, the Sun and the Earth form the corners of an imaginary right triangle in space: the right angle is the corner at the Sun, the corner at the star is the parallax angle.
The length of the opposite side to the parallax angle is the distance from the Earth to the Sun (defined as one astronomical unit, the length of the adjacent side gives the distance from the sun to the star. Therefore, given a measurement of the parallax angle, along with the rules of trigonometry, the distance from the Sun to the star can be found. A parsec is defined as the length of the side adjacent to the vertex occupied by a star whose parallax angle is one arcsecond; the use of the parsec as a unit of distance follows from Bessel's method, because the distance in parsecs can be computed as the reciprocal of the parallax angle in arcseconds. No trigonometric functions are required in this relationship because the small angles involved mean that the approximate solution of the skinny triangle can be applied. Though it may have been used before, the term parsec was first mentioned in an astronomical publication in 1913. Astronomer Royal Frank Watson Dyson expressed his concern for the need of a name for that unit of distance.
He proposed the name astron, but mentioned that Carl Charlier had suggested siriometer and Herbert Hall Turner had proposed parsec. It was Turner's proposal. In the diagram above, S represents the Sun, E the Earth at one point in its orbit, thus the distance ES is one astronomical unit. The angle SDE is one arcsecond so by definition D is a point in space at a distance of one parsec from the Sun. Through trigonometry, the distance SD is calculated as follows: S D = E S tan 1 ″ S D ≈ E S 1 ″ = 1 au 1 60 × 60 × π
XMM-Newton
XMM-Newton known as the High Throughput X-ray Spectroscopy Mission and the X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission, is an X-ray space observatory launched by the European Space Agency in December 1999 on an Ariane 5 rocket. It is the second cornerstone mission of ESA's Horizon 2000 programme. Named after physicist and astronomer Sir Isaac Newton, the spacecraft is tasked with investigating interstellar X-ray sources, performing narrow- and broad-range spectroscopy, performing the first simultaneous imaging of objects in both X-ray and optical wavelengths. Scheduled for a two-year mission, the spacecraft remains in good health and has received repeated mission extensions, most in November 2018 and is scheduled to operate until the end of 2020, it will receive a mission extension lasting until 2022. ESA plans to succeed XMM-Newton with the Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics, the second large mission in the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 plan, to be launched in 2028. XMM-Newton is similar to NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory launched in 1999.
As of May 2018, close to 5,600 papers have been published about either XMM-Newton or the scientific results it has returned. The observational scope of XMM-Newton includes the detection of X-ray emissions from astronomical objects, detailed studies of star-forming regions, investigation of the formation and evolution of galaxy clusters, the environment of supermassive black holes and mapping of the mysterious dark matter. In 1982 before the launch of XMM-Newton's predecessor EXOSAT in 1983, a proposal was generated for a "multi-mirror" X-ray telescope mission; the XMM mission was formally proposed to the ESA Science Programme Committee in 1984 and gained approval from the Agency's Council of Ministers in January 1985. That same year, several working groups were established to determine the feasibility of such a mission, mission objectives were presented at a workshop in Denmark in June 1985. At this workshop, it was proposed that the spacecraft contain 12 low-energy and 7 high-energy X-ray telescopes.
The spacecraft's overall configuration was developed by February 1987, drew from lessons learned during the EXOSAT mission. In June 1988 the European Space Agency approved the mission and issued a call for investigation proposals. Improvements in technology further reduced the number of X-ray telescopes needed to just three. In June 1989, the mission's instruments had been selected and work began on spacecraft hardware. A project team was formed in January 1993 and based at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk, Netherlands. Prime contractor Dornier Satellitensysteme was chosen in October 1994 after the mission was approved into the implementation phase, with development and construction beginning in March 1996 and March 1997, respectively; the XMM Survey Science Centre was established at the University of Leicester in 1995. The three flight mirror modules for the X-ray telescopes were delivered by Italian subcontractor Media Lario in December 1998, spacecraft integration and testing was completed in September 1999.
XMM left the ESTEC integration facility on 9 September 1999, taken by road to Katwijk by the barge Emeli to Rotterdam. On 12 September, the spacecraft left Rotterdam for French Guiana aboard Arianespace's transport ship MN Toucan; the Toucan docked at the French Guianese town of Kourou on 23 September, was transported to Guiana Space Centre's Ariane 5 Final Assembly Building for final launch preparation. Launch of XMM took place on 10 December 1999 at 14:32 UTC from the Guiana Space Centre. XMM was lofted into space aboard an Ariane 504 rocket, placed into a elliptical, 40-degree orbit that had a perigee of 838 km and an apogee of 112,473 km. Forty minutes after being released from the Ariane upper stage, telemetry confirmed to ground stations that the spacecraft's solar arrays had deployed. Engineers waited an additional 22 hours before commanding the on-board propulsion systems to fire a total of five times, between 10–16 December, changed the orbit to 7,365 × 113,774 km with a 38.9-degree inclination.
This resulted in the spacecraft making one complete revolution of the Earth every 48 hours. After launch, XMM began its Launch and Early Orbit phase of operations. On 17 and 18 December 1999, Optical Monitor doors were opened, respectively. Instrument activation started on 4 January 2000, the Instrument Commissioning phase began on 16 January; the Optical Monitor attained first light on 5 January, the two European Photon Imaging Camera MOS-CCDs followed on 16 January and the EPIC pn-CCD on 22 January, the Reflection Grating Spectrometers saw first light on 2 February. On 3 March, the Calibration and Performance Validation phase began, routine science operations began on 1 June. During a press conference on 9 February 2000, ESA presented the first images taken by XMM and announced that a new name had been chosen for the spacecraft. Whereas the program had formally been known as the High Throughput X-ray Spectroscopy Mission, the new name would reflect the nature of the program and the originator of the field of spectroscopy.
Explaining the new name of XMM-Newton, Roger Bonnet, ESA's former Director of Science, said, "We have chosen this name because Sir Isaac Newton was the man who invented spectroscopy and XMM is a spectroscopy mission." He noted that because Newton is synonymous with gravity and one of the goals of the satellite was to locate large numbers of black hole candidat
Infrared
Infrared radiation, sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation with longer wavelengths than those of visible light, is therefore invisible to the human eye, although IR at wavelengths up to 1050 nanometers s from specially pulsed lasers can be seen by humans under certain conditions. IR wavelengths extend from the nominal red edge of the visible spectrum at 700 nanometers, to 1 millimeter. Most of the thermal radiation emitted by objects near room temperature is infrared; as with all EMR, IR carries radiant energy and behaves both like a wave and like its quantum particle, the photon. Infrared radiation was discovered in 1800 by astronomer Sir William Herschel, who discovered a type of invisible radiation in the spectrum lower in energy than red light, by means of its effect on a thermometer. More than half of the total energy from the Sun was found to arrive on Earth in the form of infrared; the balance between absorbed and emitted infrared radiation has a critical effect on Earth's climate.
Infrared radiation is emitted or absorbed by molecules when they change their rotational-vibrational movements. It excites vibrational modes in a molecule through a change in the dipole moment, making it a useful frequency range for study of these energy states for molecules of the proper symmetry. Infrared spectroscopy examines transmission of photons in the infrared range. Infrared radiation is used in industrial, military, law enforcement, medical applications. Night-vision devices using active near-infrared illumination allow people or animals to be observed without the observer being detected. Infrared astronomy uses sensor-equipped telescopes to penetrate dusty regions of space such as molecular clouds, detect objects such as planets, to view red-shifted objects from the early days of the universe. Infrared thermal-imaging cameras are used to detect heat loss in insulated systems, to observe changing blood flow in the skin, to detect overheating of electrical apparatus. Extensive uses for military and civilian applications include target acquisition, night vision and tracking.
Humans at normal body temperature radiate chiefly at wavelengths around 10 μm. Non-military uses include thermal efficiency analysis, environmental monitoring, industrial facility inspections, detection of grow-ops, remote temperature sensing, short-range wireless communication and weather forecasting. Infrared radiation extends from the nominal red edge of the visible spectrum at 700 nanometers to 1 millimeter; this range of wavelengths corresponds to a frequency range of 430 THz down to 300 GHz. Below infrared is the microwave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Sunlight, at an effective temperature of 5,780 kelvins, is composed of near-thermal-spectrum radiation, more than half infrared. At zenith, sunlight provides an irradiance of just over 1 kilowatt per square meter at sea level. Of this energy, 527 watts is infrared radiation, 445 watts is visible light, 32 watts is ultraviolet radiation. Nearly all the infrared radiation in sunlight is shorter than 4 micrometers. On the surface of Earth, at far lower temperatures than the surface of the Sun, some thermal radiation consists of infrared in the mid-infrared region, much longer than in sunlight.
However, black body or thermal radiation is continuous: it gives off radiation at all wavelengths. Of these natural thermal radiation processes, only lightning and natural fires are hot enough to produce much visible energy, fires produce far more infrared than visible-light energy. In general, objects emit infrared radiation across a spectrum of wavelengths, but sometimes only a limited region of the spectrum is of interest because sensors collect radiation only within a specific bandwidth. Thermal infrared radiation has a maximum emission wavelength, inversely proportional to the absolute temperature of object, in accordance with Wien's displacement law. Therefore, the infrared band is subdivided into smaller sections. A used sub-division scheme is: NIR and SWIR is sometimes called "reflected infrared", whereas MWIR and LWIR is sometimes referred to as "thermal infrared". Due to the nature of the blackbody radiation curves, typical "hot" objects, such as exhaust pipes appear brighter in the MW compared to the same object viewed in the LW.
The International Commission on Illumination recommended the division of infrared radiation into the following three bands: ISO 20473 specifies the following scheme: Astronomers divide the infrared spectrum as follows: These divisions are not precise and can vary depending on the publication. The three regions are used for observation of different temperature ranges, hence different environments in space; the most common photometric system used in astronomy allocates capital letters to different spectral regions according to filters used. These letters are understood in reference to atmospheric windows and appear, for instance, in the titles of many papers. A third scheme divides up the band based on the response of various detectors: Near-infrared: from 0.7 to 1.0 µm. Short-wave infrared: 1.0 to 3 µm. InGaAs covers to about 1.8 µm. Mid-wave infrared: 3 to 5 µm (defined by the atmospheric window and covered by indium antimonide and mercury cadmium telluride and by lead
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