http://blogs.sundaymercury.net/weirdscience/

Jumbo's left its door open

By Daniel Smith on Jan 13, 10 12:00 PM

SOFIA_Door_Open.jpg

But there's no need to panic.

It's just NASA's new flying telescope SOFIA - which is designed for infrared astronomy observations at altitudes of about 41,000 feet (about 12 km) in the stratosphere.

The water vapor in the Earth's atmosphere blocks some infrared wavelengths from reaching the ground, but SOFIA's flight capability allows it to rise above it all.

Engineers have been busy testing it out and expect to have the telescope up and running this year.

Click on the image to embiggen.

2 Comments

Woody said:

There's that word again! You're embiggen-ing mad you are.

Daniel Smith Author Profile Pagesaid:

To embiggen or not to embiggen, that's the real question.

Authors

Daniel Smith

Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.

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