A brief history infrared astronomy

It is 200 years since William Herschel discovered and began to explore infr ared radiation. An exhibition on the many uses of the infrared part of the spectrum for the RAS President's evening earlier this year drew together th e many discoveries and applications of this versatile waveband. Early obser vations focused on the usefulness of infrared as a measure of temperature, for example of the Moon and the solar corona. Advances in detector technolo gy led to the first sky surveys in the 1960s and 1970s. Now infrared astron omy is part of the armoury of the modern astronomer interested in anything from the origins of the universe to the disposition of water and other mole cules in interstellar space. Notable successes have come from instruments s uch as UKIRT, IRAS and ISO, and much is expected in the future from Gemini, the Next Generation Space telescope, First and Planck, among other planned instruments.