ExploraTour - Looking at the World in a Different Light


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Imagine you found a pair of special glasses that not only gave you telescopic vision but gave you the ability to see all forms of radiant energy. The universe in visible light contains all the familiar stars and galaxies you've seen before as you gazed up at the night sky.

As you scanned up through ultraviolet rays on your way to gamma rays, you would begin to see increasingly violent events (like exploding stars and black holes).

Scanning downward through infrared on your way to radio waves you would see lower energy events: plants, animals, people and buildings radiating heat energy, interstellar dust grains radiating into space, electrons moving in space, microwave radiation left over from the birth of the universe.

We can actually look at all of the types of light that reach the Earth with the help of large telescopes located above the atmosphere on spacecraft, rockets and balloons.

The view is breathtaking.


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Windows to the Universe, a project of the National Earth Science Teachers Association, is sponsored in part is sponsored in part through grants from federal agencies (NASA and NOAA), and partnerships with affiliated organizations, including the American Geophysical Union, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Earth System Information Partnership, the American Meteorological Society, the National Center for Science Education, and TERC. The American Geophysical Union and the American Geosciences Institute are Windows to the Universe Founding Partners. NESTA welcomes new Institutional Affiliates in support of our ongoing programs, as well as collaborations on new projects. Contact NESTA for more information. NASA ESIP NCSE HHMI AGU AGI AMS NOAA