All the images on this page were observed by the SIRCA (Stockholm observatory IR CAmera) team with the IR-camera SIRCA mounted on the 2.56m NOT telescope, Canary Islands. All images are previews Click on any image to get a larger version.

Thermal Mars (M band)

This thermal image shows cold and warm regions on Mars. The south pole is clearly cold and even with a phase of 93.5% it is possible to see the whole disk due to heat radiation from the dark side (i.e. to the right). Especially interesting on the dark side is the 'heat band' at the equator.

With a bright monitor the Mars moon Phobos can easily be seen to the north east (up and left) of Mars, otherwise use the high-contrast version with Phobos marked in the image.

Mars (K band)

In the Near-IR (K band) Mars looks a lot like in the optical with the south pole clearly visible as well as continents. At these wavelengths there is still some heat radiation from the dark side, albeit more homogeneous than in the M-band.

Mars (J band)

At shorter near-IR wavelengths (J-band in this case) it looks like an optical Mars (well, it's called the 'red planet'). The dark side is completely dark, illustrating the 93.5% phase of reflected sun light.

Archimedes (L band)

Part of an enormous Moon mosaic in the thermal L-band (6058x2633 pixels). The full moon mosaic will be presented in a future interactive website using flash, where it will be possible to move around in the mosaic and select different regions. Features (craters etc.) will be shown and the full resolution versions of these will be individually optimized (monitors only have 256 intensity levels while the mosaic has over 20000).

Anyway, in this example image we can see Archimedes to the left, Aristillus (up right corner) and Autolycus below (yes, I have the original 12" NASA Moon globe at home!). The Lunik2 landing site is in this region!

W3 IRS1 (K+PAH+L band)

IR colour image, obtained by combining K-band (blue), PAH (green) and L-band (red) filters

M82 core region (K+L band)

IR colour image, using K-band (blue) and L-band (red) observations. The green channel was calculated by combining K and L colours. The L-band channel has been exaggerated a lot in this image to show some core details, otherwise everything would have been blue.

Calabash nebula (K+H2O+L)

IR colour image, using K (blue), H2O (green) and L-band (red) observations.

The BN Object (L band)

L-band image of the BN objec. The image has been deconvolved to show sharper details and then combined with the original image so that it shows faint structure at the same time.

Frosty Leo (K+L band)

IR colour image, using K (blue) and L (red) exposures. The green channel was calculated by combining K and L colours.

Trapezium (PAH filter)

PAH (PolyAromatic Hydrocarbon) image. The dark spots are unavoidable in such a nebulous region as the Orion nebula due to the chopping and nodding procedure used for thermal IR observations. On the other hand, the field of view is much larger than one SIRCA field because of the large chopping and nodding distances used to make the image.

The Orion bar (PAH filter)

PAH (PolyAromatic Hydrocarbon) image. This image is also much larger than one SIRCA field due to the nodding and chopping sizes used.

NGC1333 IRAS1 (L band)

The deeply embedded cluster NGC 1333 is part of the Perseus giant molecular cloud (distance about 1000 ly). The several hundred cluster members are very young (less than one million years old) so star formation is currently going on. This image portraits a bright IRAS source in NGC 1333.