Friday 2 January 2015

Infrared Mini Game 2 - Research

I am running very short on time as I will be leaving the country for a few days soon. It is due to this that I took it upon myself to look into research for the second mini game. This minigame will be about the use of Infrared in space exploration. This is not a complete literature review, as my role is to focus on the design/implementation of the minigames. But it should be enough for me to make a start on the design and implementation on my second Infrared based minigame.

Research

From what I've gathered on the Internet and by talking with Dr.Claus in one of our meetings, Infrared is used to explore and see things in space that would otherwise not be viewable. Or as easily viewable, due to interferences. It is a form of electromagnetic radiation. An example of this can be seen in the image here.

I started by looking at the research links Begoña posted regarding Beagle 2, after Dr.Claus mentioned to us that it might be worth while to look into it. I looked through a few of her links here (http://astronauticssimulation.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/more-about-dr-malcolm-claus-meeting.html).

I stumbled across the Infrared Mineralogical Mapping Spectrometer (OMEGA) experiment documentation after viewing the NASA Beagle 2 experiments page. I spent an hour reading up on the documentation here and around the topic of spectrometers but this information was very technical and way over my head. This specific entry was also just a proposal and no actual data was collected. I also realized I needed something simpler and more eye catching for my mini game. But the mention of spectrometers gave me a starting point.

In our final team meeting we proposed to look into an "explore the galaxy" option. As it may break up the constant 'staring at planets and moons' theme. Rather than focus on one single object in space. This minigame would be about a few different ones viewed from afar. I looked a bit deeper into this with spectronomy, using youtube and I found this video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faW_G3ctB8A - Exploring the Infrared Universe. This was a very useful video clip and it introduced me to Infrared exploration in a way that I understood. In the video they make mention of the, amongst other things, Near / Mid and Far infrared wavelengths and what each is used for. 

The video goes further to make mention of the different space telescopes, IRAS / ISO / Akari and Spitzer. This information was just what I needed. I summarized the juicy bits below:

Near / mid / far infrared

As an object cools it will transmit its radiation at progressively longer wavelengths and therefore further into the infrared.

  • Near infrared = radiation wavelengths that are longer than those in the visible spectrum (what we can see normally). Cooler red stars will become more apparent and interstellar dust will become transparent when viewed with near infrared wavelengths.
  • Mid infrared = the cool interstellar dust itself starts to shine. Interstellar dust can often be found around celestial objects such as red stars.
  • Far infrared = transmitted by very cold objects. Using this wavelength astronomers can observe the cold radiation of protostars. And stare into the center of galaxies, including the Milky Way. This allows us to make observations on objects very, very far away as we can bypass the plethora of noisy data that may otherwise appear.

Observing the Infrared spectrum from Earth is difficult because molecules in the atmosphere interfere with the observation. Additionally the Earths own infrared radiation interferes with observation. It is due to this and the best way to measure the infrared spectrum is from in space.

Spacecraft & Instruments

The video went on to explain the different space craft used in Infrared imaging, briefly. Again a summary of what was said can be found below.

  • IRAS - The first ever space based observatory for Infrared wavelength measurement.
  • ISO - Detected water in the universe. In the atmosphere around planets in our galaxy.
    • - Dust and gas that fill the space between stars is called the interstellar medium. ISO found a carbon rich material called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon. In space this materials presence is a strong advocate to organic chemistry and can be used in research for life on other planets.
    • - Discovered that there was a peak of star formation about 3 billion years ago. This discovery was achieved as ISO was able to use the infrared spectrum to view past the interferences that normally surrounded galaxies.
    • - Andromeda (our neighbor Galaxy) is considered to be a typical spiral galaxy. However ISO discovered that it was made up of several concentric ring, of a very cold dust around 13 Kalvin. Far to cold to be viewable on the visual wavelengths.
    • - In a nearby galaxy fast moving streams of plasma was observed being released from the center of the galaxy, but until the introduction of ISO, we were unable to view through all the gas and dust to see into the center. ISO revealed, using Infrared wavelength that the central object in this galaxy was a black hole.

  • Akari - Japanese infrared astronomy satellite, not much information on this.
  • Spitzer - NASA's infrared space observatory launched in 2003

Herschel Space Observatory

After those the ESA's Herschel space observatory was build. The worlds largest space telescope. It allowed unparallelled exploration capabilities and allows us to probe space in much more detail than we were before, using the Infrared spectrum. Herchel consists of the following parts, which make up its payload.

  • PACS - Photo conductor array camera and spectrometer - Can study young galaxies and star forming nebula. It is the first spectrometer capable of obtaining the complete image of an object at once.
  • SPIRE - Spectral and photometric imagine receiver - Designed to exploit wavelengths that have never been studied before. Can be used to study the history of star formation in the universe
  • HIFI - Heterodine instrument for the far infrared - High res spectrometer also designed to observe unexploited wavelengths. It is able to identify individual molecular species. Used to study galaxy development and star formation.

The remaining parts of the payload consists of the shielding and cooling systems. All of these are found underneath the huge primary mirror (the largest of its kind in space).

After watching the aforementioned video I started looking at Herschel in itself and found the following youtube videos very interesting:


The lecture videos were very interesting and gave some very good photographic examples of star formations using Herschel. Allowing users to see otherwise unviewable 'extra galactic background'. This was achieved by using the SPIRE camera mentioned earlier. 

The 'ESA Herschel Space Observatory: 1st year achievements and early science results part 2' video also gave examples of star formation of the Polaris (or Ursa Minor) and Aquila constellations of space. The video went on to demonstrate how one of these looked likely to have stars at some stage while the other did not. This was done via measurements of Infrared wavelengths and scatter graphs.

They also made mention that the HIFI system was used to obtain 'the most complete spectrum of molecular gas at high spectral resolution ever'.

Again this is where graphs, unknown calculations and terminology started to come in but it was still useful to get an overview of just how the Herschel space observatory and more importantly Infrared wavelength measurements were being used in a practical way.

They made mention of a Herschel Atlas program. Which was the biggest undertaking for space-area measurement. This program might be worth looking into if I need some new ideas for minigames. At this moment in time however, the team has agreed that I will be doing two minigames only and AK the other two.

Rough Concepts based off research

Thus far I have come up with two core concepts for my infrared mini game based on the research above:

  • Star Formation using Infrared - This could be something simple like the connect the dots game in Dragon Age or what the mastery's mechanic looks like in Skyrim.
  • Difference Wavelengths - Using Different type of Wavelength to see and identify different things in a nebula (Short/Mid/Far Infrared Wavelengths)


Either of these will work. I think I have enough research about infrared for now. My next objective will be to look into how to make a nice looking nebula skybox to use. Regardless of which option I pick from the above - I will need to have this made and it will need to look as amazing as possible. I might even need three versions (one for each potential wavelength).

This is the next step I need to take.

References:

Infrared in Space Exploration Websites:

Youtube:

Wikipedia:

Reports/Journals:
<Add Neptune Report reference about payloads here>


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