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R.A. Shafer, D.J. Benford (NASA / GSFC), K.D. Irwin (NIST-Boulder), S.H. Moseley (NASA / GSFC), F. Pajot (IAS), G.J. Stacey (Cornell), J.G. Staguhn (NASA / GSFC & SSAI)
The SOFIA airborne observatory will provide a high spatial resolution, low background telescope for far-infrared astrophysical investigations. Selected as a PI instrument for SOFIA, SAFIRE is an imaging Fabry-Perot spectrograph covering 100\mum-655\mum, with spectral resolving power of ~500 (200km/s). This resolution is well matched to extragalactic emission lines and yields the greatest sensitivity for line detection. SAFIRE will make important scientific contributions to the study of the powering of ULIRGs and AGN, the role of C{\sc ii} cooling in extragalactic star formation, the evolution of matter in the early Universe, and the energetics of the Galactic center. SAFIRE will employ a two-dimensional pop-up bolometer array in a 16\times32 format to provide background-limited imaging spectrometry. Superconducting transition edge bolometers and SQUID amplifiers have been developed for these detectors.