ExploraTour - Looking at the World in a Different Light


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Imagine you found a pair of special glasses that not only gave you telescopic vision but gave you the ability to see all forms of radiant energy. The universe in visible light contains all the familiar stars and galaxies you've seen before as you gazed up at the night sky.

As you scanned up through ultraviolet rays on your way to gamma rays, you would begin to see increasingly violent events (like exploding stars and black holes).

Scanning downward through infrared on your way to radio waves you would see lower energy events: plants, animals, people and buildings radiating heat energy, interstellar dust grains radiating into space, electrons moving in space, microwave radiation left over from the birth of the universe.

We can actually look at all of the types of light that reach the Earth with the help of large telescopes located above the atmosphere on spacecraft, rockets and balloons.

The view is breathtaking.


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Generous sponsorship of Windows to the Universe is provided by the Hewlett Foundation, the American Geological Institute, the American Geophysical Union, the National Science Foundation, NASA, NCAR, and the CISM and CMMAP projects. NASA CMMAP AGU CISM NCAR Hewlett AGI NSF