A montage of images taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope over the years. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. See image gallery
Massive
stars can wreak havoc on their surroundings, as can be seen in this new
view of the Carina nebula from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Full image and caption
The
spectacular swirling arms and central bar of the Sculptor galaxy are
revealed in this new view om NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Full image and caption
This
infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Helix
nebula, a cosmic starlet often photographed by amateur astronomers for
its vivid colors and eerie resemblance to a giant eye. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ.of Ariz. Full image and caption
PASADENA,
Calif. -- Ten years after a Delta II rocket launched NASA's Spitzer
Space Telescope, lighting up the night sky over Cape Canaveral, Fla.,
the fourth of the agency's four Great Observatories continues to
illuminate the dark side of the cosmos with its infrared eyes.
The telescope studied comets and asteroids, counted stars,
scrutinized planets and galaxies, and discovered soccer-ball-shaped
carbon spheres in space called buckyballs. Moving into its second decade
of scientific scouting from an Earth-trailing orbit, Spitzer continues
to explore the cosmos near and far. One additional task is helping NASA
observe potential candidates for a developing mission to capture,
redirect and explore a near-Earth asteroid.
"President Obama's goal of visiting an asteroid by 2025 combines
NASA's diverse talents in a unified endeavor," said John Grunsfeld,
NASA's associate administrator for science in Washington. "Using Spitzer
to help us characterize asteroids and potential targets for an asteroid
mission advances both science and exploration."
Spitzer's infrared vision lets it see the far, cold and dusty side of
the universe. Close to home, the telescope has studied the comet dubbed
Tempel 1, which was hit by NASA's Deep Impact mission in 2005. Spitzer
showed the composition of Tempel 1 resembled that of solar systems
beyond our own. Spitzer also surprised the world by discovering the
largest of Saturn's many rings. The enormous ring, a wispy band of ice
and dust particles, is very faint in visible light, but Spitzer's
infrared detectors were able to pick up the glow from its heat.
Perhaps Spitzer's most astonishing finds came from beyond our solar
system. The telescope was the first to detect light coming from a planet
outside our solar system, a feat not in the mission's original design.
With Spitzer's ongoing studies of these exotic worlds, astronomers have
been able to probe their composition, dynamics and more, revolutionizing
the study of exoplanet atmospheres.
Other discoveries and accomplishments of the mission include getting a
complete census of forming stars in nearby clouds; making a new and
improved map of the Milky Way's spiral-arm structure; and, with NASA's
Hubble Space Telescope, discovering that the most distant galaxies known
are more massive and mature than expected.
"I always knew Spitzer would work, but I had no idea that it would be
as productive, exciting and long-lived as it has been," said Spitzer
project scientist Michael Werner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., who helped conceive the mission. "The spectacular
images that it continues to return, and its cutting-edge science, go far
beyond anything we could have imagined when we started on this journey
more than 30 years ago."
In October, Spitzer will attempt infrared observations of a small
near-Earth asteroid named 2009 DB to better determine its size, a study
that will assist NASA in understanding potential candidates for the
agency's asteroid capture and redirection mission. This asteroid is one
of many candidates the agency is evaluating.
Spitzer, originally called the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, was
renamed after its launch in honor of the late astronomer Lyman Spitzer.
Considered the father of space telescopes, Lyman Spitzer began
campaigning to put telescopes in space, away from the blurring effects
of Earth's atmosphere, as early as the 1940s. His efforts also led to
the development and deployment of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, carried
to orbit by the space shuttle in 1990.
In anticipation of the Hubble launch, NASA set up the Great
Observatories program to fly a total of four space telescopes designed
to cover a range of wavelengths: Hubble, Spitzer, the Chandra X-ray
Observatory and the now-defunct Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.
"The majority of our Great Observatory fleet is still up in space,
each with its unique perspective on the cosmos," said Paul Hertz,
Astrophysics Division director at NASA headquarters in Washington. "The
wisdom of having space telescopes that cover all wavelengths of light
has been borne out by the spectacular discoveries made by astronomers
around the world using Spitzer and the other Great Observatories."
Spitzer ran out of the coolant needed to chill its longer-wavelength
instruments in 2009, and entered the so-called warm mission phase. Now,
after its tenth year of peeling back the hidden layers of the cosmos,
its journey continues.
"I get very excited about the serendipitous discoveries in areas we
never anticipated," said Dave Gallagher, Spitzer's project manager at
JPL from 1999 to 2004, reminding him of a favorite quote from Marcel
Proust: "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new
landscapes, but in having new eyes."
JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science
Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the
Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at
the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages
JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .
Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov
J.D. Harrington 202-358-5241
Headquarters, Washington
j.d.harrington@nasa.gov
