The atmosphere of the Earth acts like a huge shield stopping harmful electromagnetic radiation like infrared, ultraviolet and X-rays from reaching the Earth's surface. Now, that's good for life on Earth!! However, to the astronomer looking for these types of invisible radiation, this is bad!!
| Even when astronomers use instruments to observe distant stars in visible light (optical telescopes), this same atmosphere cause the images to blur and change in brightness - the stars twinkle. |
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Orbiting space observatories are revealing exciting and interesting information of our universe that we would never be able to observe from the Earth.
We are going to look at some of the latest that are revealing so much about the Sun. They are called SOHO, Yohkoh, TRACE and Ulysses.
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Oh, by the way,
What do you call an alien spaceship
that goes too close to the Sun?
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Okay, we know what the space observatories are called, but where exactly are they, and what do they do?
The picture below shows where the different satellites are in space and the orbits they are in. Click on a satellite to find out more about it.
Okay, those are the satellites we have in space at the moment, but what about for the future?