FUSE looks at light in the far ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, between 90 to 120 nanometers, which is unobservable with other telescopes. Its primary mission is to characterize universal deuterium, in an effort to learn about the stellar processing times of the deuterium left over from the Big Bang.
External links
FUSE Homepage at Johns Hopkins University (http://fuse.pha.jhu.edu/)
FUSE French Website at Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (http://www2.iap.fr/Fuse/)
FUSE, a MIDEX (medium-class Explorer) mission, carries four 0.35-m farultraviolet (UV) telescopes each with an ultraviolet high resolution spectrograph.
The detectors cover the farultraviolet band from the hydrogen ionization edge at 91 to 119 nm (nanometers), just short of the Lyman alpha line at 122 nm.
These far UV spectra are used to measure the abundance of deuterium in the universe, as well as study helium absorption in the intergalactic medium, hot gas in the galactic halo, and cold gas in molecular clouds from molecular hydrogen lines.
Feeds |
Contact