Epistemophilia: I saw infrared

Ok, that was dumb-but, it does make me think of one of the best celebrity interviews I ever read which was with Michael Biehn of Aliens and Terminator fame. He was so unusually honest he flat out rocked balls. He said his least favorite directors were Edward James Olmos (who was kind of a dick) and the guy who directed that Navy Seals movie he was in. Biehn said the guy was a dumbass because, among other reasons, he told Charlie and Michael that they were going to infiltrate a terrorist camp because they were able to see with their infrared goggles that they had missiles stored away. Michael had to explain that infrared didn't mean you could see random things through walls. How can you not love that guy? Outraged over the egregious state of science education in this country.

I see the director's name was Lewis Teague and his career highpoint appeared to be directing Jewel of the Nile and Cujo. He has since gone on to direct something called TBone N Weasel. (Holy shit, Gregory Hines was in it? Ok, time to step away from the IMDB.)

So, I listened to an Astronomy Cast the other day about infrared astronomy. Being able to use telescopes in the infrared was a huge boon to astronomy (it's how we found the supermassive black hole in the Milky Way among many other things.) Infrared is split into near, mid and far with near being closest to what we can see with our eyes and when we talk about terrestrial infrared detectors, we usually mean near infrared. Far infrared is cold stuff. Anything that emits heat (which is just about everything) emits some form of infrared.

The name, btw, comes from the Latin meaning "below." So Infrared is below red on the spectrum. Or you could say, between microwaves and visible light/red.

We experience far infrared as heat but not near infrared. Here is some info from NASA, which is geared toward kids thus I could understand it about the using false colors to read infrared images, among other things.

The boundaries between near, mid and far and not universally agreed upon, but the boundaries of infrared in general are. It's a much longer wavelength range than visible light.

They also mentioned that you can remove the infrared blocking filters from your fancy digital camera to use it as an infrared detector (or, presumably, see secret missile stashes.) This almost makes me want a digital camera.

Infrared telescopes that see in the far range have to be super cooled so they have to be in orbit. Like Spitzer and, in 2014(ish), the James Webb. Germanium is typically used as it is a semi-conductor that is transparent to infrared light.

Also, Theodore Gray has a website? Cool. I love his book.