ALBERT

Description: The Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRFT) is a one-meter-class, liquid-helium-cooled, earth-orbiting astronomical observatory that will be the infrared component of NASA's family of Great Observatories. SIRTF will investigate numerous scientific areas including formation and evolution of galaxies, stars, and other solar systems; supernovae; phenomena in our own solar system; and, undoubtedly, topics that are outside today's scientific domain. SIRTF's three instruments will permit imaging at all infrared wavelengths from 1.8 to 1200 microns and spectroscopy from 2.5 to 200 microns. The observatory will operate at an altitude of 100,000 km where it will achieve a five-year lifetime and operate with better than 80 percent on-target efficiency. The scientific importance and technical and programmatic readiness of SIRTF has been recognized by the 1991 report of the National Research Council's Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey Committee which recently identified SIRTF as the highest priority major new initiative in all of astronomy for the coming decade.

Description: WIRE, SOFIA and SIRTF are three planned NASA missions for infrared astronomy. Each will make significant contributions to the study of exo-zodiacal dust, planetary debris disks, and/or the zodiacal material within our own solar system. These missions and their measurement and scientific capabilities are synopsized. The principal contribution of these missions to this field of study will be to establish and strengthen its intellectual foundations rather than to pinpoint specific targets for planetary searches. This is consistent with their relatively near-term availability. Moreover, this intellectual understanding can assure that subsequent missions approach this subject from a sound scientific perspective which will yield valuable results independent of the success of a particular planet finding strategy. Each of these missions - most urgently WIRE with its Fall, 1998 launch date - would make good use of a list of candidate target stars for exo-zodiacal/planet-finding studies. The preparation of such a list was one of the recommendations of the exo-zodiacal workshop.

Description: While the subject of this workshop, which we will refer to as ET (for Enlightenment Telescope), is a dazzling successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, its location is unlikely to be the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) used by HST. Locations suggested for ET include High Earth Orbit (HEO) and the moon. The first space telescope to occupy HEO will be the liquid helium cooled Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF). The selection of HEO for SIRTF was the outcome of a recent study led by the Ames Research Center which showed significant advantages for SIRTF in HEO vs. LEO. This article summarizes the main results of that study. We begin with a review of SIRTF's rationale and requirements, in part because the IR capabilities and low temperature proposed for ET make it something of a successor to SIRTF as well as to HST. We conclude with some comments about another possible location for both SIRTF and ET, the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrangian point.

Description: Results of a deep near-infrared imaging survey of low-luminosity cold IRAS sources in the Taurus dark cloud are discussed. The images involved identify the compact sources energizing the IRAS sources, identify infrared nebulosity around numbers of the invisible sources, and reveal the large-scale (about 1000 to 10,000 AU) morphology of this nebulosity. Some of the invisible sources show a clear bipolar or monopolar morphology suggesting a close relation of the nebulosity with a bipolar mass outflow. It is concluded that the nebulosity is likely due to scattering of radiation from the central source by the dust associated with the mass outflow extending to the poles of a circumstellar dust disk.

Description: Two different techniques have been used to derive the Saturn disk's ring brightness temperatures from 380-micron observations: (1) comparisons of these wide-beam observation disk-ring system results with those obtained for an earlier epoch, when the rings were edge-on, then differencing the two measurements to obtain a value for the rings' contribution; and (2) ring contribution resolution during scanning along the disk-ring plane, to yield a B-ring brightness temperature of 39 + or - 8 K at 380 microns. The results obtained indicate a gradual decrease of observed ring brightness temperature from the IR to the radio wavelength range.

Description: This paper describes the scientific and technical background and prospects for the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF). SIRTF is a cryogenically-cooled, one meter-class space telescope which will be operated by NASA as an observatory for infrared astronomy, in the mid-1990's. SIRTF will provide detailed studies of even the faintest IRAS sources, important new capabilities for the study of known astrophysical phenomena, and the potential to make new and unexpected discoveries about the nature of the universe. The long-life SIRTF mission has undergone intensive review by the SIRTF Science Working Group, which was selected in mid-1984. This paper presents the outcome of that review process and describes the SIRTF program as it is now envisioned. Particular emphasis will be placed on the choice of orbit for SIRTF, the SIRTF scientific performance requirements, and the baseline design concept for the SIRTF facility and mission.

Description: IRAS observations of a large, morphologically selected sample of strongly interacting disk-type galaxies have demonstrated that galaxy-galaxy collisions can lead to enhanced infrared emission, but not in all cases. Infrared luminosities of the interacting galaxies span a large range, but are about a factor of 2 higher, on average, than those of isolated disk galaxies. The data suggest the existence of a cutoff in blue luminosity, below which no galaxies show markedly enhanced infrared emission. Only the most strongly interacting systems in the sample show extreme values of infrared excess, suggesting that deep, interpenetrating collisions are necessary to drive infrared emission to extreme levels. Comparisons with optical indicators of star formation show that infrared excess and color temperatures correlate with the level of star-formation activity in the interacting galaxies. All interacting galaxies in our sample that exhibit an infrared excess and have higher than normal color temperatures also have optical indicators of high levels of star formation. It is not necessary to invoke processes other than star formation to account for the enhanced infrared luminosity in this sample of interacting galaxies.

Description: The complexity and variety of objects in the infrared universe have been revealed by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). Further exploration of this universe will be possible with the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), which offers vast improvements in sensitivity and resolution over IRAS. SIRTF's planned capabilities and current status are briefly reviewed.

Description: The first observation of the 26-micron line from singly ionized iron in SN 1987A is reported. The total flux is 4.5 + or - 0.9 x 20 to the -18th W/sq cm. The line width (FWHM) is 4000 + or - 600 km/s. The minimum iron mass is found to be about 0.02 solar, indicating that the emission originates in the heavy element mantle and not in the hydrogen-rich envelope. Since this mass is less than estimates based on near-infrared measurements or the optical light curve, the emission is probably optically thick. In this case, the flux measurement together with the observed line width suggest a temperature of 3500 + or - 1500 K for the mantle. The broad line width suggests that mixing of the ejected iron with lighter elements in overlying layers has occurred.

Description: The Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) is planned for launch by NASA in the mid-1990's. It will be a cryogenically-cooled observatory for infrared astronomy and will carry several focal plane instruments which will provide a wide range of imaging, photometric, and spectroscopic capabilities. SIRTF will build on the scientific and technical progress of the successful IRAS mission and take the next step in the exploration of the Universe at infrared wavelengths. Most of the observing time during the five-to-ten year SIRTF mission will be available to General Investigators, so there will be ample opportunities for the pursuit of problems originating from within the Space Life Sciences community. Here, a review is given of the capabilities of SIRTF for this style of investigation, using the study of carbon in the Galaxy as a specific example. The very high sensitivity of SIRTF's spectrometers to diffuse emission will allow studies of carbon in both the gaseous and solid phase in the interstellar medium and should be of particular importance for the identification of the carbon-bearing macromolecules believed to be responsible for the emission features identified in the near infrared. SIRTF will also carry out studies of a wide variety of evolved stars which are returning gas and solid phase carbon to the interstellar medium and contribute to our understanding of the carbon budget in the Galaxy. These studies in the area of galactic astronomy will be complemented by detailed investigations of carbon-bearing compounds in solar system objects, including the surfaces of distant asteroids and cometary nuclei which are too faint to be studied in any other way.