An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics
English-French-Persian

A European Space Agency satellite which carried the most sensitive infrared telescope ever launched. It operated between November 1995 and April 1998 and made particularly important observations of the dusty regions of the Universe. ISO was equipped with four science instruments: an infrared camera (CAM), a long-wavelength spectrometer (LWS), a photo-polarimeter (PHT), and a short-wavelength spectrometer (SWS). The instruments jointly covered wavelengths from 2.5 to around 240 microns with spatial resolutions ranging from 1.5 arcseconds to 90 arcseconds. Its 60 cm diameter telescope was cooled by superfluid liquid helium to temperatures of 2-4 K. The mission was a great technical, operational and scientific success. During its routine operational phase, ISO successfully made some 30,000 individual imaging, photometric, spectroscopic, and polarimetric observations ranging from objects in our own solar system to the most distant extragalactic sources.

→ infrared; → space; → observatory.