Observatories in Space

Catherine Turon (1)

1 GEPI - Galaxies, Etoiles, Physique, Instrumentation

Space observatories are having major impacts on our knowledge of the Universe, from the Solar neighborhood to the cosmological background, opening many new windows out of reach to ground-based observatories. Celestial objects emit all over the electromagnetic spectrum, and the Earth's atmosphere blocks a large part of them. Moreover, space offers a very stable environment from where the whole sky can be observed with no (or very little) perturbations, providing new observing possibilities. This chapter presents a few striking examples of astrophysics space observatories and of major results spanning from the Solar neighborhood and our Galaxy to external galaxies, quasars and the cosmological background.

Mots clés: cosmic background; Astronomy; astrophysics; space; observations; stars; galaxies; interstellar medium; cosmic background.

Domaines: Instrumentation et méthodes pour l'astrophysique [astro-ph.IM]; Instrumentation et méthodes pour l'astrophysique [astro-ph.IM]

Catherine Turon. Observatories in Space. Oddbjorn Engvold, Rolf Stabell, Bozena Czerny, John Lattanzio. Astronomy and Astrophysics 2010, Eolss Publishers, Oxford, UK, (http://www.eolss.net), 50 p., 46 Figures, 2010, Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), Developed under the Auspices of the UNESCO. ⟨hal-00569092v2⟩