Last October, Diane Wooden was chasing a comet - from the back of a jumbo jet. The aeroplane, known as the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), is a Boeing 747 modified to hold a 2.5-metre telescope and fly to altitudes of up to 13.7 kilometres, where it escapes most of the atmospheric water vapour that obscures infrared light in the night sky. Wooden, an astrophysicist at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, was on board in the hope of capturing images of warm dust spewing off Comet ISON (see Nature 506, 281-283; 2014). But soon after she pointed the telescope at the comet, a circuit-breaker failed. It could not be replaced until the plane landed. Instead of nearly an hour observing the comet, Wooden got just a few minutes.
展开▼
