{"id":373,"date":"2009-11-18T11:05:24","date_gmt":"2009-11-18T11:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=373"},"modified":"2009-11-18T11:05:24","modified_gmt":"2009-11-18T11:05:24","slug":"searching-cosmos-background-radiation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/searching-cosmos-background-radiation\/","title":{"rendered":"Searching the Cosmos for Background Radiation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Twenty Years Ago &#8212; November 18, 1989 &#8212; the Cosmic Background Explorer, or COBE, was launched atop a Delta rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Here&#8217;s the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/topics\/universe\/features\/cobe_20th.html\">20th anniversary press release<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/map.gsfc.nasa.gov\/media\/990295\/990295b.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<em>(Artist&#8217;s depiction of the COBE spacecraft. NASA image.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And here&#8217;s a link to  <a href=\"http:\/\/lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov\/product\/cobe\/more_images\/cobeslide02.jpg\">another nice artist&#8217;s conception of the spacecraft<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>COBE was designed to measure the microwave background radiation left from the early universe. COBE carried three instruments:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE), to search for infrared background radiation<\/li>\n<li>Differential Microwave Radiometer (DMR), to map the cosmic radiation<\/li>\n<li>Far Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS), to compare the background radiation to a known standard<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\nThe astrophysics behind it are beyond me, but I like the <a href=\"http:\/\/lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov\/product\/cobe\/cobe_image_table.cfm\">pretty pictures<\/a>.<\/p>\n<a class=\"synved-social-button synved-social-button-share synved-social-size-24 synved-social-resolution-single synved-social-provider-facebook nolightbox\" data-provider=\"facebook\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"Share on Facebook\" 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Here&#8217;s the 20th anniversary press release. (Artist&#8217;s depiction of the COBE spacecraft. NASA image.) And here&#8217;s a link to another nice artist&#8217;s conception of the \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/searching-cosmos-background-radiation\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[26,37,11,17],"class_list":["post-373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space","tag-launch","tag-nasa","tag-space-history","tag-vandenberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}