Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21715704h&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #157.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The Faint Object Camera for the SOFIA Telescope (FORCAST) is a mid-infrared facility instrument for the Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). In late May of this year, FORCAST achieved first light on SOFIA during a Telescope Assembly characterization flight, successfully taking photometry of Jupiter, its moons, and M82 from an altitude of 35,000 ft. Analysis of images of Jupiter and one of its moons, Ganymede, show the in-flight sensitivity to be comparable to that expected from preflight (lab) measurements and models.
In preparation for SOFIA Short Science, we constructed Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs) for known proplyds and protostars (Smith et al. 2005) in the core of the Orion molecular cloud using 2MASS (Skrutskie et al. 2006), IRAC on Spitzer, TReCS on Gemini South (Smith et al. 2005), and 880mm SCUBA data (Mann and Williams 2009). FORCAST will provide important wavelength coverage (20 - 40 microns) which when used in conjunction with previous data will constrain the physical properties of the proplyds and protostars. We fit the observed SEDs with those from radiative transfer models for circumstellar disks and protostars from Robitaille et al (2006, 2007). With these models, we can extrapolate into the 20 - 40 micron region of FORCAST and determine the range of models that FORCAST is capable of detecting. Using the FORCAST sensitivity model and the SEDs of known proplyds, we expect to detect 67% of the proplyds found by other investigations. However, detectability will be greatly influenced by the presence of structures in the diffuse dust emission associated with the HII region complex. Comparing FORCAST observations with the radiative transfer models will help to understand the physical properties of proplyds and protostars, and perhaps illuminate the impact of their environments, such as photoevaporation of disks and effects from crowding.
Adams Joseph D.
Gull George
Henderson Charles
Herter Terry L.
Hoadley Keri
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