Mike Malloy

[Tom]

NASA has released a trove of data from its sky-mapping mission, allowing scientists and anyone with access to the Internet to peruse millions of galaxies, stars, asteroids and other hard-to-see objects.

Many of the targets in the celestial catalog released online this week have been previously observed, but there are significant new discoveries. The mission's finds include more than 33,000 new asteroids floating between Mars and Jupiter and 20 comets.

NASA launched the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which carried an infrared telescope, in December 2009 to scan the cosmos in finer detail than previous missions. The spacecraft, known as WISE, mapped the sky 1 1/2 times during its 14-month mission, snapping more than 2 1/2 million images from its polar orbit.

The spacecraft's ability to detect heat glow helps it find dusty, cold and distant objects that are often invisible to regular telescopes.

The batch of images made available represents a little over half of what's been observed in the all-sky survey. The full cosmic census is scheduled for release next spring.

"The spectacular new data just released remind us that we have many new neighbors," said Pete Schultz, a space scientist at Brown University, who had no role in the project.

University of Alabama astronomer William Keel already started mining the database for quasars — compact, bright objects powered by super-massive black holes.

"If I see a galaxy with highly ionized gas clouds in its outskirts and no infrared evidence of a hidden quasar, that's a sign that the quasar has essentially shut down in the last 30,000 to 50,000 years," Keel said.

WISE ran out of coolant in October, making it unable to chill its heat-sensitive instruments and observe faraway objects. So it instead spent the next four months seeking out near-Earth asteroids and comets that should help scientists better calculate whether any are potentially threatening. The spacecraft went into hibernation in February.

The mission, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was hundreds of times more sensitive than its predecessor, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, which launched in 1983 and made the first all-sky map in infrared wavelength.

NASA has released a trove of data from its sky-mapping mission, allowing scientists and anyone with access to the Internet to peruse millions of galaxies, stars, asteroids and other hard-to-see objects.

Many of the targets in the celestial catalog released online this week have been previously observed, but there are significant new discoveries. The mission's finds include more than 33,000 new asteroids floating between Mars and Jupiter and 20 comets.

NASA launched the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which carried an infrared telescope, in December 2009 to scan the cosmos in finer detail than previous missions. The spacecraft, known as WISE, mapped the sky 1 1/2 times during its 14-month mission, snapping more than 2 1/2 million images from its polar orbit.

The spacecraft's ability to detect heat glow helps it find dusty, cold and distant objects that are often invisible to regular telescopes.

The batch of images made available represents a little over half of what's been observed in the all-sky survey. The full cosmic census is scheduled for release next spring.

"The spectacular new data just released remind us that we have many new neighbors," said Pete Schultz, a space scientist at Brown University, who had no role in the project.

University of Alabama astronomer William Keel already started mining the database for quasars — compact, bright objects powered by super-massive black holes.

"If I see a galaxy with highly ionized gas clouds in its outskirts and no infrared evidence of a hidden quasar, that's a sign that the quasar has essentially shut down in the last 30,000 to 50,000 years," Keel said.

WISE ran out of coolant in October, making it unable to chill its heat-sensitive instruments and observe faraway objects. So it instead spent the next four months seeking out near-Earth asteroids and comets that should help scientists better calculate whether any are potentially threatening. The spacecraft went into hibernation in February.

The mission, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was hundreds of times more sensitive than its predecessor, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, which launched in 1983 and made the first all-sky map in infrared wavelength.

NASA has released a trove of data from its sky-mapping mission, allowing scientists and anyone with access to the Internet to peruse millions of galaxies, stars, asteroids and other hard-to-see objects.

Many of the targets in the celestial catalog released online this week have been previously observed, but there are significant new discoveries. The mission's finds include more than 33,000 new asteroids floating between Mars and Jupiter and 20 comets.

NASA launched the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which carried an infrared telescope, in December 2009 to scan the cosmos in finer detail than previous missions. The spacecraft, known as WISE, mapped the sky 1 1/2 times during its 14-month mission, snapping more than 2 1/2 million images from its polar orbit.

The spacecraft's ability to detect heat glow helps it find dusty, cold and distant objects that are often invisible to regular telescopes.

The batch of images made available represents a little over half of what's been observed in the all-sky survey. The full cosmic census is scheduled for release next spring.

"The spectacular new data just released remind us that we have many new neighbors," said Pete Schultz, a space scientist at Brown University, who had no role in the project.

University of Alabama astronomer William Keel already started mining the database for quasars — compact, bright objects powered by super-massive black holes.

"If I see a galaxy with highly ionized gas clouds in its outskirts and no infrared evidence of a hidden quasar, that's a sign that the quasar has essentially shut down in the last 30,000 to 50,000 years," Keel said.

WISE ran out of coolant in October, making it unable to chill its heat-sensitive instruments and observe faraway objects. So it instead spent the next four months seeking out near-Earth asteroids and comets that should help scientists better calculate whether any are potentially threatening. The spacecraft went into hibernation in February.

The mission, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was hundreds of times more sensitive than its predecessor, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, which launched in 1983 and made the first all-sky map in infrared wavelength.

http://tinyurl.com/3sej2wg
_________________
Conservatism is a pale horse, and the riders should be called DEATH.

[Tom]

Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer

http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/gallery_images.html
_________________
Conservatism is a pale horse, and the riders should be called DEATH.

[Tom]

Lambda Orionis






April 14, 2011 - Orion’s Big Head Revealed in Infrared

In Greek mythology, Orion was a hunter whose vanity was so great that he angered the goddess Artemis. As his punishment, Artemis banished the hunter to the sky where he can be seen as the famous constellation Orion. In the constellation, Orion’s head is represented by the star Lamdba Orionis. When viewed in infrared light, NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, reveals a giant nebula around Lambda Orionis, inflating Orion’s head to huge proportions.

Lambda Orionis is a hot, massive star that is surrounded by several other hot, massive stars, all of which are creating radiation that excites a ring of dust, creating the "Lambda Orionis molecular ring." Also known as SH 2-264, the Lambda Orionis molecular ring is sometimes called the Meissa ring. In Arabic, the star Lambda Orionis is known as “Meissa” or “Al-Maisan," meaning “the shining one."The Meissa Ring is of interest to astronomers because it contains clusters of young stars and proto-stars, or forming stars, embedded within the clouds. With a diameter of approximately 130 light-years, the Lambda Orionis molecular ring is notable for being one of the largest star-forming regions WISE has seen. This is also the largest single image featured by WISE so far, with an area of the sky approximately 10 by 10 degrees in size; equivalent to a grid of 20 by 20 full Moons. Nevertheless, at less than 1 percent of the whole sky’s area, it is just a taste of WISE data.

The bright blue star in the lower left corner of the image is the star Betelgeuse, which represents one shoulder of the hunter Orion. The name Betelgeuse is actually a corruption of the original Arabic phrase “Yad al-Jauza',"meaning “hand of the giant one." Betelgeuse is well known for being a red supergiant star, yet in WISE’s infrared view it appears blue, as do most stars in WISE images. This is because most stars, including Betelgeuse, put out more light in the shortest infrared wavelengths of light captured by WISE, and those shorter wavelengths are presented in WISE images as blue and cyan.

In visible light, Orion’s other shoulder is clearly marked by the variable star Bellatrix. In infrared light, however, Bellatrix is a somewhat unremarkable cyan-colored star in the right side of the image. In Latin, Bellatrix means “female warrior," which is perhaps why the name was chosen for a female witch character in the popular Harry Potter books.

Also seen in this image are two dark nebulae, Barnard 30 and Barnard 35, which are parts of the Meissa ring that are so dense they block out visible light. Barnard 30 is the bright knob of gas and dust in the top center part of the image. Barnard 35 appears as a hook extending towards the center of the ring just above and to the right of the star Betelgeuse. The bright reddish object seen to in the middle right part of the image is the star HR 1763, which is surrounded by another star-forming region, LBN 876.

Color in this image represents specific wavelengths of infrared light. Blue and cyan represent 3.4- and 4.6-microns, primarily light emitted by hot stars. Green and red represent 12- and 22-micron light, which is mainly radiation from warm dust.

http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/gallery_lambda_orionis.html
_________________
Conservatism is a pale horse, and the riders should be called DEATH.

[Tom]

This Spitzer mosaic of the Large Magellanic Cloud was created as part of the "Surveying the Agents of a Galaxy's Evolution" (SAGE) legacy program. In this three color composite covering more than seven degrees on a side, blue is 3.6 microns, green is 8 microns, and red is 24 microns. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/M. Meixner (STScI) & the SAGE Legacy Team.


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Other views of the incredible universe can be seen here...


http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/featured_images.html
_________________
Conservatism is a pale horse, and the riders should be called DEATH.