Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE) was an experiment on

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedi ...

's COBE mission, to survey the diffuse

infrared Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from aroun ...

sky. Measurements were made with a reflecting telescope with 19 cm diameter aperture.Riccardo Giacconi, Daniela Calzetti, Mario Livio, Piero Madau
Space Telescope Science Institute (U.S.) - Extragalactic background radiation: a meeting in honor of Riccardo Giacconi : proceedings of the Extragalactic Background Radiation Meeting, Baltimore, 1993 May 18-20, Volume 1993 - Page 137 (Google Books accessed October 2010)
/ref> The goal was to obtain brightness maps of the universe at ten frequency bands ranging from the near to far infrared (1.25 to 240 micrometer). Also,

linear polarization In electrodynamics, linear polarization or plane polarization of electromagnetic radiation is a confinement of the electric field vector or magnetic field vector to a given plane along the direction of propagation. The term ''linear polariza ...

was measured at 1.25, 2.2, and 3.5 micrometers. During the mission, the instrument could sample half the

celestial sphere In astronomy and navigation, the celestial sphere is an abstract sphere that has an arbitrarily large radius and is concentric to Earth. All objects in the sky can be conceived as being projected upon the inner surface of the celestial sphere, ...

each day.

Mission details

The

Cosmic Background Explorer The Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE ), also referred to as Explorer 66, was a NASA satellite dedicated to cosmology, which operated from 1989 to 1993. Its goals were to investigate the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB or CMBR) of th ...

(COBE) mission was launched in November 1989. The spacecraft contained liquid helium that cooled the DIRBE instrument to below 2K to allow it to image in the infrared wavelengths. Primary observation started December 11, 1989 and ran until September 21, 1990, when the liquid helium ran out. After that date only observations in the 1.25 to 4.9 micrometer bands could be carried out, at about 20% of original sensitivity. The DIRBE instrument was an absolute radiometer with an off-axis folded-Gregorian reflecting telescope, with 19 cm diameter aperture.

References

Other infrared surveys

* IRAS 1983 *

WISE WISE may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * WISE (AM), a radio station licensed to Asheville, North Carolina *WISE-FM, a radio station licensed to Wise, Virginia * WISE-TV, a television station licensed to Fort Wayne, Indiana Education * ...

2010 * Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope 2027 (planned)

External links

NASA: DIRBE OverviewDIRBE data
{{Portal bar, Astronomy, Stars, Spaceflight, Outer space, Solar System Infrared imaging Infrared telescopes Astronomical surveys

Mission details

See also

References

Other infrared surveys

External links