Starts With A Bang #132 - Space in the ultraviolet

<p>Whenever you look at the Universe in a more powerful way than you ever have before, either in a new set of wavelengths, at higher sensitivity, on wider-field scales, or with novel capabilities, you open yourself up to a remarkable possibility. In addition to the &quot;obvious&quot; science gains that you&#39;ll achieve from finding more examples and revealing greater details about the types of objects and events you already know about, you also give the Universe an opportunity to surprise you: by finding things, thanks to the new power of your novel observatory, that you never expected would be out there.</p><p>This isn&#39;t necessarily restricted to flagship missions that &quot;brute force&quot; their way past the limits of our prior frontiers, but can sometimes, for certain specific use cases, be accomplished by much lower-cost missions that specialize in one particular set of applications: what I call &quot;finesse missions&quot; rather than flagship missions. In the far-ultraviolet part of the spectrum, there&#39;s very little that we can do for astronomy from down here on Earth; we have to go to space to access that portion of the spectrum. But other than NASA&#39;s Hubble Space Telescope, far-ultraviolet telescopes have been few and far between. Thanks to Principal Investigator of the ASPERA mission, Dr. Carlos Vargas of the University of Arizona, that&#39;s all about to change.</p><p>In this fascinating conversation, we talk about the science that&#39;s awaiting us in the far-ultraviolet, including in one of the most poorly studied regions of our own galaxy: the circumgalactic medium. It&#39;s an important place, as it&#39;s quite likely where the majority of the baryons, or the components of normal matter in the Universe, are actually located. Have a listen to Carlos and I talking about the far-ultraviolet, the ASPERA mission, and more on this edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast!</p><p>(This image shows a mock-up of the ASPERA mission, slated to launch in just a few months, in space, where it can probe the far-ultraviolet emissions in the outer halo of our own galaxy and a whole lot more. <a href="https://news.arizona.edu/news/uarizona-will-lead-nasa-space-telescope-mission-reveal-unseen-dynamic-lives-galaxies" target="_blank">Credit</a>: NASA/ASPERA/C. Vargas/University of Arizona)</p>