UA-built camera used to view powerful Pistol Star for first time

Karen C. Tully Arizona Daily Wildcat UA astronomy professor Rodger Thompson stands next to a projected image of the most powerful star yet discovered. This $100 million project uses infrared telescopes to see the Pistol Star, which is about 25,000 light years away.

Mounted aboard the Hubble Space Telescope, NICMOS, short for the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, penetrated the dust cloud around the Pistol Star, a stellar body about 25,000 light years away that emits energy equivalent to 10 million suns.

"The accuracy of this camera is the same as being able to see a golf ball in mid-air in Tokyo," said Rodger Thompson, a University of Arizona astronomy professor and the principal investigator for the $100 million NICMOS project.

"The telescope produces an image that refocuses on our detectors, which are sensitive to infrared light instead of optical light," Thompson added.

Infrared light travels at wavelengths long enough to sweep aside the dust that surrounds stars to expose a high-resolution image, he said.

NICMOS's detectors are sensitive to infrared rays, or heat radiation, and must be cooled by solid nitrogen. If the detectors are hot, then they don't work properly, said Dean Hines, a NICMOS project research associate at the UA.

Hines was also in charge of calibrating the polar imagery system for the NICMOS team.

"We had to characterize the polar light so that we knew what direction the light was scattering," Hines said.

"We can measure the properties of the scattered light and it tells us about what's behind the dust to uncover properties that we can't see directly."

Hines said that polar imagery will allow scientists to view "the very epic of galaxy formation."

"The life and death of both stars and galaxies will ultimately tell us where we come from.

The materials in our body are the same as the materials dispensed by dying stars, and used by baby stars to form," he added.

The mysteries that exist in space cannot be solved without the Superman vision exhibited by NICMOS, said Hines.

"A lot of former UA students who are now working as scientists were influenced by this project," said Hines.

Thompson was contacted by NASA 13 years ago to manufacture the infrared machinery for space discovery.

"This is a $100 million project that was sent to sub-contractors at the Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado," Thompson said.

"We made the basic optical designs and detailed the detectors in the telescope."