28
What do the bamboo lemur and a
spiral galaxy have in common?
Both emit heat. Both are hard
to spot with the naked eye. And
both are things that astro-ecologist Steven
Longmore specializes in observing.
As a professor of astrophysics at Liverpool
John Moores University, Longmore has long
been used to keeping his gaze turned skyward.
But, in 2014, a casual backyard conversation
The same thermal imaging technology used to detect
the Virgo cluster of galaxies can be used to detect a
camouflaged cluster of rhinos.
with Serge Wich—both Longmore’s next door
neighbor and a professor of ecology at the
same university—sparked a dramatic shift in
perspective.
“Serge is an expert on using drones to track
animals, and he’d just started incorporating
thermal cameras,” Longmore says. “But while
these were great in theory, his team really just
wasn’t used to using them. I just thought, well,
us astronomers have been using thermal imaging
for a long time, so maybe we can help you.”
In fact, astronomers have employed
thermal imaging since the 1850s, when
Scottish astronomer Charles Piazzi Smyth
first demonstrated the ability to register the
long-wavelength infrared radiation emitted
by the heat of the moon using a simple
temperature sensor. But it wasn’t until a
hundred years later, with the invention of
highly sensitive detector arrays, that infrared
astronomy came into its own.
While the shorter wavelength light
visible to our eyes is absorbed by clouds of
interstellar dust, infrared light is not. So, when
these new infrared telescopes were pointed
toward deep space, they revealed a brightly
glowing universe of distant exoplanets, stars,
and galaxies, where optical telescopes had
shown only a dark, empty void.
The same thing can happen when you direct
these telescopes toward—what appears to
be—uninhabited undergrowth.
“Animals have evolved over billions of
years to camouflage themselves into their
surroundings under the kind of light that
we and other predators ordinarily see with,”
Longmore explains. “But they tend to be much
PHOTOS (TOP TO BOTTOM) SHUTTERSTOCK; COURTESY OF LJMU/ KNOWSLEY SAFARI