Carried aboard a pimped-out Boeing 747SP jumbo jet, NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, does most of its (her?) work at 12,000 meters (40,000 ft) and above.
Up here, there’s little atmospheric water vapor to distort measurements, and NASA gets a much clearer view of the cosmos. Recently, SOFIA earned its keep by helping astronomers solve a cosmic mystery.
As you know if you’ve watched any space show ever, stellar material is the basis of humans and everything else in the universe.
But it was unclear how these tiny grains of stardust avoided vaporization at the hands of the supernovae that distribute them throughout the universe.
Peering deep into the 10,000-year-old Sagittarius A East supernova remnant with its infrared eyes, SOFIA discovered that dense regions of gas around the star cushion cosmic dust particles.
This prevents their eradication as they rebound from the massive shockwave of the preceding blast.
Even though only 7–20 percent of the dust around the Sagittarius A East managed to survive obliteration, this is still enough to birth around 7,000 Earth-sized bodies.
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