Did you know NASA’s newest space telescope is launching THIS WEEKEND??? Let’s learn about SPHEREx… 🔭🧪 (1/n) - ThreadSky

skylargrayson.bsky.social • 3 days ago

Did you know NASA’s newest space telescope is launching THIS WEEKEND???

Let’s learn about SPHEREx…

🔭🧪 (1/n)

Comments

laluzzz.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yup.

skylargrayson.bsky.social•3 days ago

First off, the name.

SPHEREx = Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer.

I’m…I’m just gonna call it SPHEREx.

It’s an infrared all sky survey mission, meaning it will observe the whole sky multiple times in near-IR wavelengths (2/n)

skylargrayson.bsky.social•3 days ago

But there’s other all sky and other infrared telescopes, so what makes SPHEREx unique? Well not only is it going to map the sky, but it’s going to do so in 102 colors. This shows the number of filters other all sky surveys have in comparison…yeah that’s a big change 🤯 (3/n)

skylargrayson.bsky.social•3 days ago

The telescope is going to make its way across the sky over the course of 2 years, sending home ~3600 images every day!

Plus it looks neat. The conical systems are designed to block light from the earth and sun and keep the instruments cool.

📸: NASA, JPL-Caltech, BAE Systems (4/n)

skylargrayson.bsky.social•3 days ago

Also for the purpose of keeping it cool, it’s going to orbit around the poles, tracing the terminator line (the day-night division on earth). That way it’s always going to be opening at least 91 degrees away from the sun.

(5/n)

skylargrayson.bsky.social•3 days ago

So that’s an overview of design and mission…stay tuned for another post on the fun stuff (aka the science we can do with it!!!)

Launch is currently slated for March 2nd at 7:09pm PST so you can watch online if you want! And of course I’ll share updates too (6/6)

vivelaminerva.bsky.social•2 days ago

Eek! :D

mlow29.bsky.social•3 days ago

DOGE didn’t get to it (yet).

jeffc99.bsky.social•3 days ago

Cool. Thanks for keeping us up to date with what’s going on.

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply