[meteorite-list] NASA's WISE Mission Ready to Complete Extensive Sky Survey

[Ron Baalke]

July 16, 2010

J.D. Harrington 
Headquarters, Washington                               
202-358-5241 
j.d.harrington at nasa.gov 

Whitney Clavin 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 
818-354-4673 
whitney.clavin at jpl.nasa.gov 
RELEASE: 10-168

NASA'S WISE MISSION READY TO COMPLETE EXTENSIVE SKY SURVEY

WASHINGTON -- NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, 
will complete its first survey of the entire sky on July 17. The 
mission has generated more than one million images so far, of 
everything from asteroids to distant galaxies 

"Like a globe-trotting shutterbug, WISE has completed a world tour 
with 1.3 million slides covering the whole sky," said Edward Wright, 
the principal investigator of the mission at the University of 
California, Los Angeles. 

Some of these images have been processed and stitched together into a 
new picture being released today. It shows the Pleiades cluster of 
stars, also known as the Seven Sisters, resting in a tangled bed of 
wispy dust. The pictured region covers seven square degrees, or an 
area equivalent to 35 full moons, highlighting the telescope's 
ability to take wide shots of vast regions of space. 

The new picture was taken in February. It shows infrared light from 
WISE's four detectors in a range of wavelengths. This infrared view 
highlights the region's expansive dust cloud, through which the Seven 
Sisters and other stars in the cluster are passing. Infrared light 
also reveals the smaller and cooler stars of the family. 

To view the new image, as well as previously released WISE images, 
visit: 

http://www.nasa.gov/wise 

"The WISE all-sky survey is helping us sift through the immense and 
diverse population of celestial objects," said Hashima Hasan, WISE 
Program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "It's a great 
example of the high impact science that's possible from NASA's 
Explorer Program." 

The first release of WISE data, covering about 80 percent of the sky, 
will be delivered to the astronomical community in May of next year. 
The mission scanned strips of the sky as it orbited around the 
Earth's poles since it launched last December. WISE always stays over 
the Earth's day-night line. As the Earth moves around the sun, new 
slices of sky come into the telescope's field of view. It has taken 
six months, or the amount of time for Earth to travel halfway around 
the sun, for the mission to complete one full scan of the entire sky. 

For the next three months, the mission will map half of the sky again. 
This will enhance the telescope's data, revealing more hidden 
asteroids, stars and galaxies. The mapping will give astronomers a 
look at what's changed in the sky. The mission will end when the 
instrument's block of solid hydrogen coolant, needed to chill its 
infrared detectors, runs out. 

"The eyes of WISE have not blinked since launch," said William Irace, 
the mission's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 
Pasadena, Calif. "Both our telescope and spacecraft have performed 
flawlessly and have imaged every corner of our universe, just as we 
planned." 

So far, WISE has observed more than 100,000 asteroids, both known and 
previously unseen. Most of these space rocks are in the main belt 
between Mars and Jupiter. However, some are near-Earth objects, 
asteroids and comets with orbits that pass relatively close to Earth. 
WISE has discovered more than 90 of these new near-Earth objects. The 
infrared telescope is also good at spotting comets that orbit far 
from Earth and has discovered more than a dozen of these so far. 

WISE's infrared vision also gives it a unique ability to pick up the 
glow of cool stars, called brown dwarfs, in addition to distant 
galaxies bursting with light and energy. These galaxies are called 
ultra-luminous infrared galaxies. WISE can see the brightest of them. 

"WISE is filling in the blanks on the infrared properties of 
everything in the universe from nearby asteroids to distant quasars," 
said Peter Eisenhardt of JPL, project scientist for WISE. "But the 
most exciting discoveries may well be objects we haven't yet imagined 
exist." 

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

For more information about WISE, visit: 

http://www.nasa.gov/wise 

http://wise.astro.ucla.edu 
	
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