A Universe Through Pictures

Students love cell phones and especially cell phone cameras. But today’s imaging technology provides incredible possibilities of observation. My fellowship at Lockheed Martin’s Optical Payload Center of Excellence provided the window to view an entirely unimagined universe of observation. From being able to witness what is going on at the center of our galaxy, to spotting and intercepting a missile that is being launched from a hiding place, or to literally monitoring a white mother polar bear and her cubs in a den under the snow, imaging today allows us to observe in ways limited only by one’s imagination. During my fellowship at Lockheed Martin I was introduced to the idea of ‘designing a mission.’ Images can represent important qualitative and quantitative data sets for Earth Science to understand phenomena and change in Earth systems. This ETP allows students to apply the knowledge of the EM spectrum to a real life application in analytical optics.

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