Why are instruments like the Herschel Space Telescope designed specifically for infrared capture?
Answer
To capture light shifted into the infrared by cosmological redshift, bypassing atmospheric blockage.
Due to cosmological redshift caused by the expanding universe, light from the most distant objects is shifted out of the visible spectrum and into the infrared. Furthermore, Earth's atmosphere absorbs a significant portion of this infrared radiation, and the atmosphere itself generates thermal noise in this wavelength range. Therefore, specialized space-based observatories, like the Herschel Space Telescope, must be constructed to operate far from Earth to effectively and cleanly capture this faint, stretched infrared radiation.
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