Abstract-SOFIA in the era of JWST and ALMA

Harold W. Yorke; Erick T. Young; Eric E. Becklin, (Jason) Zhixin Zeng,

https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of-spie/10700/107000E/SOFIA-in-the-era-of-JWST-and-ALMA/10.1117/12.2314222.short?SSO=1

SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, is a joint project between NASA and the German Aerospace Center DLR to provide infrared and sub-millimeter observing capabilities to the worldwide astronomical community. With a wide range of instruments that cover both imaging and spectroscopy, SOFIA has produced unique scientific results that could not be obtained with a ground-based facility. In the coming decade, SOFIA will be a critical complement to the other major facilities for astronomical research, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) by filling in the otherwise unobservable wavelength range of 30–300 μm. SOFIA provides a wide range of instrumentation, and this paper will describe some of the new capabilities in heterodyne spectroscopy, direct detection spectroscopy, and polarimetry.

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