Spitzer Space Telescope

The Universe at a glance…

Pete Baker on March 17, 2012, 6:20 pm

| Readers 56

Well, several glances actually… As spotted by the Guardian blog’s Tom McCarthy, NASA has released a new atlas and catalog of the entire infrared sky “showing more than a half billion stars, galaxies and other objects captured by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.” And an impressive view it is. [Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA] From the Nasa press release The sky can be thought of as a sphere that surrounds us in three dimensions. To make a map of …

The Galactic Centre Revisited

Pete Baker on August 24, 2011, 8:10 pm

| Readers 7

While waiting, hopefully, for the arrival of the James Webb Space Telescope, here’s a short video of what the current space telescopes, particularly Nasa’s Spitzer and ESA’s Herschel, have seen at the centre of our galaxy. The above image is a three-color composite, showing infrared observations from two of Spitzer instruments. [Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech]. Video from SpitzerSpaceCenter. As well as the twisted ring of very dense and cold gas and dust at the galactic centre, there have been other amazing structures observed. Then there are the “colossal swathes of …