NASA SOFIA Stratospheric Observatory

SOFIA, NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, is ready to take off into the heavens for its first science flight this week.

Two astronomy professors, Mark Morris of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and Paul Harvey of the University of Colorado at Boulder will use the Faint Object InfraRed Camera for the SOFIA Telescope (FORCAST), a mid-spectrum infrared camera developed by Terry Herter of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. to learn more about star formation from the airborne observatory.

"My primary target is the Orion nebula, which is a star formation factory," Morris said. "It's close and offers the best views of stars forming right before our very eyes."

Morris hopes to better understand the complexities of the star formation process by viewing the infrared energy emitted by warm dust in the interstellar clouds that are forming the stars. The dust is heated by the luminous, newborn stars.

"Nature doesn't form stars in isolation," he said. "It forms them in clusters, out of natal clouds that collapse under their own gravity.

If you observe carefully, you start to get a clearer picture of how all the new stars are interacting with each other and with their environment."

Harvey's immediate goal is to use the unique combination of high image IR resolution available with SOFIA and FORCAST to study the distribution of dust and gas around Sharpless 140, a young, forming star cluster. Sharpless 140 lies almost 3,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cepheus.

"Observing the birth of stars in our own galaxy is critical, because planetary systems form at the same time that a central star is formed," Harvey said. "Some of the most luminous galaxies in the universe appear to be powered by extreme bursts of star formation."