WISE Snaps Image of 'Leggy' Galactic Creature

Image comment: The new WISE image of the hidden galaxy IC 342
Image credits: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA

The Milky Way is only one structure in a sea of galaxies permeating the Universe. Astronomers can peer through it at various wavelengths in order to look deep in the Cosmos, back to the time when it was only a few millions of years old. However, there are structures in our vicinity that cannot be observed in certain wavelengths, given that they are obscured by the dust and gas inside our own galaxy, or by the brightness of the stars in our galactic core. But some types of light can go through this “shield” and look immediately beyond our galaxy.

This is precisely what NASA's newly-launched Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope did, when it used its infrared detectors to peer through the Milky Way's central regions. Its target is a spiral galaxy called IC 342, which astronomers know about, but that cannot be observed in visible light wavelengths. The structure is in fact oftentimes referred to by experts as the “hidden galaxy.” It is obscured by the thick clouds of dust in our galaxy's central regions, but this veil can easily be pierced by sensitive infrared telescopes such as WISE and Spitzer.

“This galaxy has been of great interest to astronomers because it is relatively close. However, determining its distance from Earth has proven difficult due to the intervening Milky Way. This image was made from observations by all four infrared detectors aboard WISE. Blue and cyan represent infrared light at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is primarily light from stars. Green and red represent light at 12 and 22 microns, which is primarily emission from warm dust,” experts at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California write of the new images on their official website.

Edwin Hubble, the world-famous astronomer after whom the orbital telescope is named, first proposed some time ago that the hidden galaxy was a part of our Local Group of galaxies. However, more recent observations, using advanced telescopes, determined that IC 342 is most likely located much farther away than Hubble calculated. New estimates place it a distance of between 6.6 and 11 million light-years away from the Milky Way. For comparison, our closest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, is some 2.5 million light-years away.

WISE: Your Guide to the Infrared Sky

Learn about NASA's WISE mission and all the goodies it is expected to uncover in this new, interactive feature.

Click here to launch interactive

WISE Captures a Cosmic Rose

A new infrared image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, shows a cosmic rosebud blossoming with new stars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

A new infrared image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, shows a cosmic rosebud blossoming with new stars. The stars, called the Berkeley 59 cluster, are the blue dots to the right of the image center. They are ripening out of the dust cloud from which they formed, and at just a few million years old, are young on stellar time scales.

The rosebud-like red glow surrounding the hot, young stars is warm dust heated by the stars. Green "leafy" nebulosity enfolds the cluster, showing the edges of the dense, dusty cloud. This green material is from heated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, molecules that can be found on Earth in barbecue pits, exhaust pipes and other places where combustion has occurred.

Red sources within the green nebula indicate a second generation of stars forming at the surface of the natal cloud, possibly as a consequence of heating and compression from the younger stars. A supernova remnant associated with this region, called NGC 7822, indicates that a massive star has already exploded, blowing the cloud open in a "champagne flow" and leaving behind this floral remnant. Blue dots sprinkled throughout are foreground stars in our Milky Way galaxy.

Berkeley 59 and NGC 7822 are located in the constellation of Cepheus at a distance of about 3,300 light-years from Earth.

Infrared light is color coded in this picture as follows: blue shows 3.4-micron light; cyan, 4.6-micron light; green, 12-micron light; and red, 22-micron light.

JPL manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise . Additional images are at http://wise.astro.ucla.edu .

WISE telescope assembled and preparing for launch

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has been assembled and is undergoing final preparations for a planned Nov. 1 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

The mission will survey the entire sky at infrared wavelengths, creating a cosmic clearinghouse of hundreds of millions of objects -- everything from the most luminous galaxies, to the nearest stars, to dark and potentially hazardous asteroids. The survey will be the most detailed to date in infrared light, with a sensitivity hundreds of times better than that of its predecessor, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite.

"Most of the sky has never been imaged at these infrared wavelengths with this kind of sensitivity," said Edward Wright, the mission's principal investigator at UCLA. "We are sure to find many surprises."

On May 17, the mission's science instrument was delivered to Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., where it was attached to the spacecraft, built by Ball. The assembled unit was then blasted by sound to simulate the effects of launch. Tests for electronic "noise" in the detectors will be performed next.

The science instrument is a 40-centimeter (16-inch) telescope with four infrared cameras. A cryostat, or cooler, uses frozen hydrogen to chill the sensitive megapixel infrared detectors down to seven Kelvin (minus 447 degrees Fahrenheit). The instrument was built by Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah.

Among expected finds from WISE are hundreds of thousands of asteroids in our solar system's asteroid belt, and hundreds of additional asteroids that come near Earth. Many asteroids have gone undetected because they don't reflect much visible light, but their heat makes them glow in infrared light that WISE can see. By cataloguing the objects, the mission will provide better estimates of their sizes, a critical step for assessing the risk associated with those that might impact Earth.

"We know that asteroids occasionally hit Earth, and we'd like to have a better idea of how many there are and their sizes," said Amy Mainzer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., the mission's deputy project scientist. "Whether they are dark or shiny, they all emit infrared light. They can't hide from WISE."

The mission is also expected to find the coldest stars -- dim orbs called brown dwarfs that are too small to have ignited like our sun. Brown dwarfs are littered throughout our galaxy, but because they are so cool, they are often too faint to see in visible light. The infrared detectors on WISE will pick up the glow of roughly 1,000 brown dwarfs in our galaxy, including those coldest and closest to our solar system. In fact, astronomers say the mission could find a brown dwarf closer to us than the nearest known star, Proxima Centauri, located approximately 4 light-years away.

"We've been learning that brown dwarfs may have planets, so it's possible we'll find the closest planetary systems," said Peter Eisenhardt, the mission's project scientist at JPL. "We should also find many hundreds of brown dwarfs colder than 480 degrees Celsius (900 degrees Fahrenheit), a group that as of now has only nine known members."

In addition, the survey will reveal the universe's most luminous galaxies seen long ago in the dusty throes of their formation, disks of planet-forming material around stars, and other cosmic goodies. The observations will guide other infrared telescopes to the most interesting objects for follow-up studies. For example, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the Herschel observatory just launched by ESA with significant NASA participation, and NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will direct their gaze at objects uncovered by WISE.

WISE will lift off from Vandenberg aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. It will orbit Earth, mapping the entire sky in six months after a one-month checkout period. Its frozen hydrogen is expected to last several months longer, allowing WISE to map much of the sky a second time and see what has changed.

JPL manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The mission's principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorer Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. Science operations and data processing will take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer Coming Together

Artist's concept of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

(PhysOrg.com) -- The science instrument for NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer has been shipped to Boulder, Colo., for a planned launch in November.

Space Dynamics Laboratory has completed NASA’s Wide‐field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) science instrument. The WISE instrument was shipped from SDL’s manufacturing and test facility in North Logan, Utah, to Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., where it will be integrated onto the satellite.

“Following a scheduled launch late this year, the SDL‐built WISE instrument will collect millions of images from which hundreds of millions of astronomical objects will be catalogued,” said Dr. Doug Lemon, director of SDL. “For decades SDL has worked with NASA to map the skies and our commitment to NASA continues as WISE prepares to chart space in infrared light, searching for the closest stars and asteroids, the origins of star systems, and some of the brightest galaxies in the Universe.”

Built for NASA by SDL, the WISE instrument is a super‐cooled infrared space‐based telescope designed to provide a full sky, infrared map that will advance the understanding of our Universe. Additionally, it will enable the James Webb Space Telescope to more efficiently target objects of interest in space. The James Webb Space Telescope is the next‐generation follow‐on to the Hubble Space Telescope.

With hundreds of times the infrared sensitivity of any previous all‐sky survey, WISE will measure the diameters of over 100,000 asteroids in our solar system, and provide a complete inventory of nearby young stars as well as of the debris disks associated with planetary systems around older nearby stars.

Standing approximately two meters tall and weighing over 360 kilograms at launch, the WISE instrument is designed to discover many cool, dim brown dwarf stars close to our sun, and detect far distant ultra-luminous infrared galaxies where star formation is taking place at a greatly accelerated rate.