NASA releases first images from WISE spacecraft

[n2doc]

(02-17) 16:45 PST Pasadena, Calif. (AP) --

A glowing comet. A star-forming cloud. A new view of the Andromeda galaxy. A dense galaxy cluster.

NASA on Wednesday released the first images from its sky-mapping spacecraft, which captured a hodgepodge of cosmic targets two months after its launch on a mission to map the entire sky.

"We've got a candy store of images coming down from space," principal investigator Edward Wright of the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a statement.

Since launching in December, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE for short, has sent back more than 250,000 raw images. NASA processed several of them for the public.



This image provided by NASA shows the immense Andromeda galaxy, also known as Messier 31, captured in full in this new image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.


This image provided by NASA shows the Comet Siding Spring appearing to streak across the sky in this new infrared image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.
Photo: AP



This image of a dense cluster of galaxies was captured by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The cluster, called Fornax because of its location in a constellation of the same name, is 60 million light-years from Earth, and is one of the closest galaxy clusters to the Milky Way. Clusters are large families of galaxies that are gravitationally bound together, containing enough matter to pull even distant galaxies toward them.
WISE's large field of view and multi-wavelength infrared sight allowed it to form this complete view of the cluster, containing dozens of bright galaxies and hundreds of smaller ones. Old stars show up at the shorter infrared wavelengths, color coded blue. Dust heated by new generations of stars lights up at longer infrared wavelengths, colored red here.


This infrared image taken by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, shows a star-forming cloud teeming with gas, dust and massive newborn stars. The inset reveals the very center of the cloud, a cluster of stars called NGC 3603. It was taken in visible light by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

WISE, which is surveying the whole sky in infrared light, is particularly sensitive to the warm dust that permeates star-forming clouds like this one. In this way, WISE complements visible-light observations.

The mission also complements Hubble and other telescopes by showing the 'big picture," providing context for more detailed observations. For example, the WISE picture here is 2,500 times larger than the Hubble inset. While the Hubble view shows the details of the hot young star cluster, the WISE picture shows the effects that this stellar powerhouse has on its neighborhood.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/multimedia/images20100216.html
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/02/17/national/a133835S12.DTL&tsp=1

[HeresyLives]

1. My new background! Beauty! Thank you!

[emilyg]

2. ty

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. That dense ring of IR emitters in the middle of the plane of Andromeda...

is that a structure that's been observed before?