Telescope - Atmospheric Electromagnetic Opacity

Atmospheric Electromagnetic Opacity

See also: Airmass

Since the atmosphere is opaque for most of the electromagnetic spectrum, only a few bands can be observed from the Earth's surface. These bands are visible – near-infrared and a portion of the radio-wave part of the spectrum. For this reason there are no X-ray or far-infrared ground-based telescopes as these have to be flown in space to observe. Even if a wavelength is observable from the ground, it might still be advantageous to fly it on a satellite due to astronomical seeing.

Read more about this topic:  Telescope

Famous quotes containing the words atmospheric and/or opacity:

    Nor has science sufficient humanity, so long as the naturalist overlooks the wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great and small thing, in every mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence which observation or analysis lay open.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    In a language known to us, we have substituted the opacity of the sounds with the transparence of the ideas. But a language we do not know is a closed place in which the one we love can deceive us, making us, locked outside and convulsed in our impotence, incapable of seeing or preventing anything.
    Marcel Proust (1871–1922)