Future Observations
Light from the first stars and galaxies is substantially redshifted due to the substantial expansion of the
universe since these early times. The redshifts of these sources are significant enough that it is not possible
to look at these objects at visible (optical) wavelengths. Instead, one needs to move all the way into the
infrared portion of the spectrum.
This is why the newest set of instrumentation for exploring the high-z universe will have exciting new
capabilities in the infrared.
Wide Field Camera 3
Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) is a new instrument that had been planned to be installed on the Hubble Space Telescope during
HST servicing mission #4. This servicing mission is currently scheduled for this year (October 8, 2008). Though this camera will be useful for many areas of astronomy, the near-infrared capabilities of this instrument are particularly exciting for high-redshift science. These near-infrared capabilities will significantly exceed the capabilities of the NICMOS instrument currently on board the Hubble and should increase our capacity for discovery by a factor of 40. Among these improvements are a much larger field of view (a factor of 6 improvement: covering ~4.6 arcmin
2 on the sky vs. ~0.8 arcmin
2 covered by NICMOS), higher near-infrared sensitivity (improving the quantum efficiency by a factor of 2-3), and a better overall spatial resolution (improving the sharpness of the images by a factor of 3 over NICMOS' wide-area camera). Putting each of these factors together, we effectively gain a factor of roughly 20-40 in the efficiency with which we are able to find sources at high redshifts.
James Webb Space Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) represents the next generation of space telescope and should completely
revolutionize our ability to image the universe in the infrared. It will have a 6.6 meter primary mirror, which
would give it a significant larger collecting area than the mirrors available on the current generation of
space telescopes (7.5X larger than HST and 60X larger than the Spitzer Space Telescope). JWST has a planned
launch in 2013 and will be in operation for three years. It will positioned a million miles from year at L2
(the second Lagrange point around the Earth).
JWST will contain four science instruments with imaging and spectroscopic capabilities. These instruments will
provide wavelength coverage from 0.7 microns to 29 microns. JWST will have significantly larger field of view
than the NICMOS camera on HST (covering more than ~15 times the area) and significantly better spatial
resolution (~0.03 arcsec) than is available with the Spitzer Space Telescope (~1.5 arcsec). Altogether, its
exceptional capabilities mean that we will increase our capacity for discovery science by more than a factor of
1000. With JWST, we should be able to learn more about the high redshift universe (at times less than 700
million years after the Big Bang) in just a few hours of observations than we have been able to learn from all
the HST observations taken to date.
Thirty Meter Telescope
The
TMT (Thirty Meter Telescope) represents the
next generation of large ground-based telescopes and is planned to
have a total collecting area which is more than 700 square meters,
more than 9 times what is available on the current generation of
10-meter class telescope. Other very large telescopes that are planned include the
Giant Magellan Telescope and
European Extremely Large
Telescope.
