Ultraviolet Telescope

ultraviolet telescope, telescope used to examine the ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, between the portion seen as visible light and the portion occupied by X-rays. Ultraviolet radiation has wavelengths of about 400 nanometres (nm) on the visible-light side and about 10 nm on the X-ray side. Earth’s stratospheric ozone layer blocks all wavelengths shorter than 300 nm from reaching ground-based telescopes. As this ozone layer lies at an altitude of 20–40 km (12–25 miles), astronomers have to resort to rockets and satellites to make observations from above it.

From 1978 to 1996 an orbiting observatory known as the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) studied celestial sources of ultraviolet radiation. The IUE telescope was equipped with a 45-cm (18-inch) mirror, and it recorded data electronically down to 100 nm. The IUE observed from a geosynchronous orbit (i.e., its period of revolution around Earth was identical to the period of Earth’s rotation) in view of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Data was transmitted to the ground station at the end of each observing tour and examined immediately on a television monitor.

Another Earth-orbiting spacecraft, the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) satellite, which operated from 1992 to 2001, surveyed the sky in the extreme ultraviolet region between 7 and 76 nm. It had four telescopes with gold-plated mirrors, the design of which was critically dependent on the transmission properties of the filters used to define the EUV band passes. The combination of the mirrors and filters was selected to maximize the telescope’s sensitivity to detect faint EUV sources. Three of the telescopes had scanners that were pointed in the satellite’s spin plane. The fourth telescope, the Deep Survey/Spectrometer Telescope, was directed in an anti-Sun direction. It conducted a photometric deep-sky survey in the ecliptic plane for part of the mission and then collected spectroscopic observations in the final phase of the mission.

The Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) observed the universe in far-ultraviolet light (wavelengths between 90.5 and 119.5 nm) from 1999 to 2007. FUSE was just one telescope with a spectrometer designed to study the far-ultraviolet region. It studied the composition of the interstellar and intergalactic mediums.

Other important ultraviolet space observatories include the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), which was launched in 2003 and observes between 140 and 280 nm. GALEX is designed to observe hot young stars in other galaxies. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) can also serve as an ultraviolet telescope. A spectrograph sensitive to light between 115 and 320 nm was installed on the HST in May 2009.