Submillimeter Technology

Our mission is to provide state-of-the-art instrumentation for the detection of both coherent and incoherent sub-millimeter radiation from space. We develop receivers and supporting hard- and software for ground-based, airborne and space observatories. We operate systems at novel telescopes like APEX and SOFIA.

Fig. 1: GREAT, the German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies, mounted at the telescope onboard SOFIA. — **Fig. 1:** *GREAT, the German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies, mounted at the telescope onboard SOFIA.*

© Thomas Struth, Universität Stuttgart

**Fig. 1:** *GREAT, the German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies, mounted at the telescope onboard SOFIA.*

© Thomas Struth, Universität Stuttgart

A last GREAT opportunity for decades to come

GREAT prepares for SOFIA’s last flight mission

May 04, 2022

With the joint decision of NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to discontinue flight operations of the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) in September 2022, unique science opportunities for high-resolution FIR spectroscopy with the German spectrometer GREAT (German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies) will also cease. GREAT is a development by the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie and the Kölner Observatorium für Submillimeter-Astronomie (KOSMA)/ Universität zu Köln, in cooperation with the DLR Institut für Optische Sensorsysteme which has been funded largely independent of the German Aerospace Center’s budget. GREAT observations were highly demanded by the general SOFIA user community.

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