Hacker News Reader

Comment by netcraft | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if the plane flies during the day or night? I would assume that for a given mission its one or the other, which makes me also wonder how fast or slow it flies. Even though it is looking in the infrared - wouldn't the daylight still affect it?

View on HN

We only fly at night. Well, technically speaking, we can observe with the sun up, but the guider cameras are optical which makes it nearly impossible to track any targets when the sky is bright. Moreover, we have to stay well away from the sun as the telescope would focus the sunlight with enough intensity to destroy itself. So, yeah, we only fly at night.

Airspeed is roughly mach 0.85.

Is there some way that civilians admirers can ride SOFIA and get to participate in some of those activities set aside for grade schoolers? I would certainly be as excited as any 6th grader to have that chance!

Grade schoolers don't fly on SOFIA. The Airborne Astronomy Ambassadors program is for grade school teachers and other educators. I can't think of any obvious way for the general public to fly on SOFIA. If you are a professional astronomer, apply for time, and you may be invited to fly. If you are an educator, apply to the Airborne Astronomy Ambassador program.

Nice to see another NASA-related astronomer here. I work on Fermi Gamma-Ray space telescope project, although I'm deep into the data processing and data management side of things.

I also have been helping out with a ton of LSST camera related things.

Next time you guys are in CHCH please do some outreach stuff. It would be great to be able to come and talk with you about the project.

Outreach isn't really my area, but I presume it will be done. There is no southern deployment this year due mostly to the heavy maintenance, but a deployment is expected next year (July? 2015).

EDIT: To make my comment sound less off hand, Education and Public Outreach is an important part of the project, just not the area I work in, so I do not know for sure what form Outreach will take, but I would be very surprised if there wasn't something.

Do you have more info about the airplane performance? I'm working on a flight simulator and this plane is one of the 747's we're going to add. I'd love to get more details about the differences compared to a regular 747SP.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com