Other Views of the Universe

Telescopes of various sorts:

Parkes 64-m radio telescope in Australia
VLA aerial view
The BIMA millimeter array is located near Mt. Lassen in northern California.
The ALMA millimeter array will be placed at this site in the Andes.
IRAS infrared telescope
COBE satellite included both infrared (DIRBE and FIRAS) and radio (DMR) instruments.
Located at the summit of Mauna Kea are a number of optical telescopes, including the twin Keck 10-m telescopes. Here's a fisheye view of one of the telescopes .
The ROSAT X-ray satellite had a set of nested mirrors to focus X-rays. The more recent Chandra satellite has a similar set of mirrors.
The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory carried a number of instruments sensitive to photons of the highest energy.

What do we learn by looking at different wavelengths?


 
radio continuum    73 cm          hot, ionized gas
                                  electrons in strong magnetic fields


radio HI line      21 cm          cool to warm clouds of neutral hydrogen gas


mm CO line        2.6 mm          cold, dense clouds of carbon monoxide
                                  composed mostly of molecular hydrogen


far infrared   12-100 microns     dust warmed by nearby (hot, young) stars


near infrared    1-10 microns     cool stars


optical           500 nm          stars, diffuse gas excited by hot stars


X-ray            1-10 nm          very hot gas: shocks and accretion disks


gamma-ray       0.001 nm          pulsars, relativistic particles colliding 
                                           with gas or photons

The Milky Way, at various wavelengths:

Multiwavelength Images of the Milky Way from NASA

A few selected galaxies, at a range of wavelengths.

NGC 253 is a nearby, almost edge-on spiral
NGC 1399 is an elliptical galaxy
- combined optical, radio and X-ray
The Coma cluster contains hundreds of galaxies ... and lots of hot gas
- galaxies in visible light
- hot gas in X-rays (and here's a big picture in X-rays )

Resources for further study:

Multiwavelength Atlas of Galaxies from Victoria University in Australia
Images of Galaxies and Quasars at radio wavelengths from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Galaxies as seen by 2MASS, an infrared survey
High vs. Low Surface Brightness Galaxies an example from U of Oregon
More images of Low Surface Brightness Galaxies from the University of Oregon.
IPAC Gallery of images in the infrared, taken by a variety of instruments (2MASS, IRAS, ISO, MSX)
The ISO Gallery of infrared images taken by ISO. See the "Normal Galaxies" item, and go to both M31 and Centaurus A for good comparison of optical vs. IR (and radio).