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SOFIA is based at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California, where its tail just barely clears the ceiling of the biggest hangar. Here, the plane readies for its mission to intercept Pluto’s shadow over the Pacific Ocean.

The High-speed Imaging Photometer for Occultations (HIPO) team of researchers works at the science-instrument console aboard SOFIA: (from left to right) Mike Person, Tom Bida, Ted Dunham, and Peter Collins.

German researchers (left to right) Enrico Pfüller, Manuel Wiedemann, and Jürgen Wolf monitor images from their Fast Diagnostic Camera (FDC), whose main purpose is to evaluate the SOFIA telescope’s optical performance. A beam-splitting tertiary mirror transmits half the reflector’s light to the FDC, mounted in the telescope cavity behind the primary mirror, and bounces the other half through a bulkhead to the pressurized cabin, where it’s fed into the HIPO instrument.

HIPO researchers (left to right) Ted Dunham, Brian Taylor, and Mike Person watch anxiously as Taylor’s laptop computer labors to process data from the Pluto occultation, based on the thousands of HIPO images taken during the preceding half hour.

Unlike the crew of a commercial airliner, SOFIA's pilot, co-pilot, and flight engineer don't work behind closed doors. During breaks in the astronomical action, when the plane is flying straight and level and everything's going as it should, one astronomer at a time may be permitted to visit the cockpit.

Author Richard Tresch Fienberg stands in front of SOFIA's telescope bulkhead, with the HIPO instrument at center and the reflector's massive counterweights at upper right.

The 2.5-meter primary mirror of SOFIA’s telescope appears here during construction, before its surface received its reflective coating. The honeycomb structure within lowers the object’s weight, and the blue and yellow tints are the result of a protective tarp and background lighting.

SOFIA works on nighttime telescope operations as it sits on the tarmac at NASA’s Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility (also at Palmdale, California) in October 2010, more than a year before the author’s flight.

In addition to its use as a portable observatory, SOFIA flies high enough above nearly all the atmosphere’s water vapor, making it an ideal observer of infrared radiation (hence the “I” in its name). During its first-light flight on May 25–26, 2010, SOFIA captured a composite image of Jupiter at wavelengths of 5.4, 24, and 37 microns (colored blue, green, and red, respectively). The white stripe in the infrared image is a region of relatively transparent clouds through which the warm interior of Jupiter shines. A visual image of approximately the same side of Jupiter appears for comparison.

Also during its first-light flight in 2010, SOFIA captured a composite image of the center of starburst galaxy M82 in Ursa Major at wavelengths of 20, 32, and 37 microns (colored blue, green, and red, respectively). The middle and top images show the same part of the galaxy at visual wavelengths. Because infrared light penetrates its dust clouds, those images reveal the star-forming heart of the galaxy.

The Orion Nebula (M42) appears in triplicate: (left to right) in visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope, in the near infrared from Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and in the mid-infrared from SOFIA. This third view, from December 2010, combines images at 19.7 and 37.1 microns (colored green and red, respectively). All panels have the same scale and orientation and show different aspects of Orion: first, hot stars, glowing hydrogen gas, and obscuring dust clouds; second, cool young stars; and third, warm dust.