Why is LIFE aiming for mid-infrared, what is the advantage? Why only mid-infrared and not also NIR/Optical? Why do we need to go to space for that?
By going to the mid-infrared regime one probes the thermal emission of the exoplanets (in contrast to investigating exoplanets in reflected light, which is done at optical/near-infrared wavelength). For reference: the thermal emission of Earth peaks at a wavelength of roughly ~11 micron. Measuring the thermal emission of an exoplanet provides constraints on its effective … Continued