Infrared Array Camera: The Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) on the Spitzer Space Telescope. It contains four detector arrays with 256 x 256 pixels each. Here it is being installed in a clean room.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

At the first Infrared Detector Technology Workshop in 1983, two groups presented their infrared results. A group from Goddard Space Flight Center, a NASA installation; Harvard Smithsonian; and the University of Arizona Steward Observatory showed results with large telescopes from a 16 x 16 array working at a wavelength of 18 microns. The observations shown were of a star-forming region in the Orion nebula, a bright galaxy nucleus, and several bright nebulae around dying stars. Our group showed our earlier results from our 1-5 micron array of the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn and M82 from far smaller telescopes. It was later that year that we also used larger telescopes, and we showed the nature of the infrared sources at the Galactic center and in forming stars with cryptic astronomical names like AFGL 2591 and IRS1. We had also begun work developing larger 5 micron arrays as part of our development activity for the NASA Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), later called Spitzer, a cold infrared telescope in space. Infrared astronomy had arrived. We could see that a variety of other areas of astronomy were going to be impacted by the results from our detectors