著者

Haruyuki OKUDA

出版者

The Japan Academy

雑誌

Proceedings of the Japan Academy, Series B (ISSN:03862208)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.95, no.9, pp.495-522, 2019-11-11 (Released:2019-11-11)

参考文献数

156

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Since the new era of infrared astronomy was opened by the Two Micron Sky Survey by Neugebauer et al. in the early 1960s, about a half century has passed. During this time, observations have expanded rapidly and widely, to almost every field of astronomy, to reveal new perspectives on the universe. As a result, infrared astronomy has become one of the major branches of astronomy, along with optical, radio, X-ray as well as high-energy particle astronomy. In Japan, we started our infrared astronomical activities at a rather early time, under relatively poor technical and environmental conditions, and using somewhat unconventional methods to overcome these difficulties. Here, a brief survey is presented of developments concerning infrared astronomy during the past half century, while mainly recollecting our footprints in the stream of world activities.