RPS Imaging Science Group

With all the recent attention on fever screening there has been a lot of column inches devoted to remote thermographic imaging.
There is more to this technique than airport screening. The European Southern Observatory has an infrared spectrograph called CRIRES (CRyogenic InfraRed Echelle Spectrograph), fitted to the Very Large Telescope in Chile. They have used this to measure the current temperature of the lower atmosphere of Pluto. At -180°C this is substantially warmer than the surface. This is believed to be because sunlight evaporates some of the surface ices, warming the atmosphere but cooling the surface. See http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2009/pr-08-09.html for more details.
Now there’s a really remote example!