The short history of infrared space telescopes

While astronomical telescopes developed rather slowly over the last four centuries, infrared telescopes made a fast career in only four decades from high mountains to aircraft, balloons and satellites. They cover the huge wavelength region from 1 to 350 μ m and have uncovered the cold and dust hidden universe. While until today all infrared space telescopes had diameters of <1 m, cooled infrared observatories with 3.5 to 6.5m mirrors will be sent into heliocentric orbits at L2 within the next few years (© 2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)