The James Webb Space Telescope should be ready to replace Hubble in 2014
Read more: Instant Expert: The unseen universe
New space observatories, huge earthbound telescopes and a continent-sized radio array will probe the origins of stars, elements and the universe itself
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The coming years will see more of the invisible universe revealed by existing instruments and new probes spanning all wavelengths.
The workhorse of current space astronomy, the Hubble space telescope, will cease to operate after 2014, at which time its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, should be ready for launch. The JWST will operate mainly in the infrared, covering wavelengths from 500 nanometres to 24 micrometres. Its main aim will be to obtain images of Earth-sized planets and to detect the very first galaxies at the edge of the observable universe. Towards 2020, SPICA, a joint Japanese-European infrared space telescope, should also be well advanced, together with a slew of giant ground-based optical and near-infrared telescopes – the , the and the .
The will span wavelengths from 0.4 to 3 millimetres and should come on stream in Chile in 2012. It will probe star-forming regions in our galaxy and others with exacting angular resolution and sensitivity.
Even ALMA will be surpassed in scale, though, by an international radio telescope known as the . To be sited in South Africa or Australia, it will connect a dense central square kilometre of radio antennas with receiving stations up to 3000 kilometres away. Ambitions for SKA are mind-blowing: it will study cosmic evolution and the nature of dark matter and dark energy through observations of hydrogen gas in a billion galaxies, and perform fundamental measurements to test our understanding of gravity and detect gravitational waves.
At the X-ray end of the spectrum, NASA and the European and Japanese space agencies are investigating the feasibility of an . If it goes ahead, IXO will peer through dust and obscuring clouds of gas to discover and map supermassive black holes back at times when galaxies were first forming, and uncover the history and evolution of matter and energy, both visible and dark. It will also investigate when and how the elements were created and how they became dispersed in the intergalactic medium.
Michael Rowan-Robinson
Michael Rowan-Robinson is professor of astrophysics at Imperial College London. He works principally on infrared and sub-millimetre astronomy, and cosmology. He contributed to the IRAS, ISO and Spitzer infrared space missions, and is currently involved with both the Herschel and Planck projects. He has been writing for ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ for over 40 years.
Recommended reading
Night Vision by Michael Rowan-Robinson (Princeton University Press, to be published late 2010)
Finding the Big Bang by P. J. E. Peebles, L. A. Page Jr and R. B. Partridge (Cambridge University Press)
Websites
(Infrared Processing and Analysis Centre, California Institute of Technology: )
(US National Radio Astronomy Observatory: )
(University of Cambridge Institute of Astronomy X-ray group: )