Was looking to see if any new spacecraft was planned to replace the super-successful Wise space telescope. There is and isn’t. There are planned IR space telescopes, but none capable of doing a 100% of the sky survey in a few months like Wise.

I did run into proposed IR space telescopes Euclid by Esa, and Wfirst by NASA. Which made me wonder, which will be better? Both are planned as 6 year missions. Euclid will be launched first, in 2020, followed by Wfirst in the mid 2020s. Wfirst will be an almost exact duplicate of Hubble, but with a wider field of view and different instruments. Have a look at the two and tell me what you think.
Https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid_
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Field_Infrared_Survey_Telescope

mollwollfumble said:

Was looking to see if any new spacecraft was planned to replace the super-successful Wise space telescope. There is and isn’t. There are planned IR space telescopes, but none capable of doing a 100% of the sky survey in a few months like Wise.

I did run into proposed IR space telescopes Euclid by Esa, and Wfirst by NASA. Which made me wonder, which will be better? Both are planned as 6 year missions. Euclid will be launched first, in 2020, followed by Wfirst in the mid 2020s. Wfirst will be an almost exact duplicate of Hubble, but with a wider field of view and different instruments. Have a look at the two and tell me what you think.
Https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid_
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Field_Infrared_Survey_Telescope

Euclid has a smaller diameter but wider field of view. But not THAT much wider a field of view.

Euclid has a diameter of 1.2 m, mass 2.1 ton, FOV 0.54 square degrees. Camera 600-megapixel in visible light and near IR excluding blue (0.55 to 0.92 micron), 65-megapixel in near IR (1 to 2 micron).
“During its mission, which will last at least 6 years, Euclid will observe about 15,000 deg2, or about a third of the extragalactic sky (the sky facing away from the Milky Way).”

WFIRST’s diameter has been increased to 2.4 m, payload mass 2.2 ton. FOV 0.28 square degrees. Camera 288-megapixel. Wavelengths 0.7 to 2.0 micron (ie. near IR only).
“a high contrast coronagraph covering shorter wavelengths (0.4 to 1.0 micrometers) is intended to achieve a part-per-billion suppression of starlight to enable the detection of planets only 0.1 arcseconds away from their host stars”.

Compare with the FOVs of Hubble 0.0028 square degrees and of WISE 0.61 square degrees. So, despite the extreme similarity of WFIRST and Hubble (WFIRST is a war-surplus telescope), it will never take such good photos of small objects such as SN1987a.

mollwollfumble said:

Was looking to see if any new spacecraft was planned to replace the super-successful Wise space telescope. There is and isn’t. There are planned IR space telescopes, but none capable of doing a 100% of the sky survey in a few months like Wise.

I did run into proposed IR space telescopes Euclid by Esa, and Wfirst by NASA. Which made me wonder, which will be better? Both are planned as 6 year missions. Euclid will be launched first, in 2020, followed by Wfirst in the mid 2020s. Wfirst will be an almost exact duplicate of Hubble, but with a wider field of view and different instruments. Have a look at the two and tell me what you think.
Https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid_
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Field_Infrared_Survey_Telescope

Euclid has a smaller diameter but wider field of view. But not THAT much wider a field of view.

Euclid has a diameter of 1.2 m, mass 2.1 ton, FOV 0.54 square degrees. Camera 600-megapixel in visible light and near IR excluding blue (0.55 to 0.92 micron), 65-megapixel in near IR (1 to 2 micron).
“During its mission, which will last at least 6 years, Euclid will observe about 15,000 deg2, or about a third of the extragalactic sky (the sky facing away from the Milky Way).”

WFIRST’s diameter has been increased to 2.4 m, payload mass 2.2 ton. FOV 0.28 square degrees. Camera 288-megapixel. Wavelengths 0.7 to 2.0 micron (ie. near IR only).
“a high contrast coronagraph covering shorter wavelengths (0.4 to 1.0 micrometers) is intended to achieve a part-per-billion suppression of starlight to enable the detection of planets only 0.1 arcseconds away from their host stars”.

Compare with the FOVs of Hubble 0.0028 square degrees and of WISE 0.61 square degrees. So, despite the extreme similarity of WFIRST and Hubble (WFIRST is a war-surplus telescope), it will never take such good photos of small objects such as SN1987a.

WISE observed in 3.4 to 22 microns wavelength, so neither Euclid nor WFIRST can even begin to be seen as a replacement for WISE, they simply couldn’t see the thermal IR given off by brown dwarfs for example.