JPL
Careers
Education
Science & Technology
JPL Logo
JPL Logo

NASA's WISE Mission Warms Up but Keeps Chugging Along

Oct 04, 2010
Members of the WISE science team compiled an image gallery of some of the mission's colorful cosmic snapshots. Flip through the gallery and vote for your favorite photos by clicking the "Your Pick" icon.
The immense Andromeda galaxy, also known as Messier 31 or simply M31, is captured in full. The mosaic covers an area equivalent to more than 100 full moons, or five degrees across the sky. › Full image and caption
The spiral beauty, called IC 342 and sometimes Hidden galaxy, is shrouded behind our Milky Way galaxy's bright band of stars, dust and gas. WISE's infrared vision cuts through this veil, offering a crisp view. › Full image and caption
This image 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. › Full image and caption
This is a view of the star-forming region IC 1795, located within the constellation Cassiopeia. This region appears dark and relatively devoid of stars in photographs taken in visible light, due to obscuring dust. The same dust glows brightly in the infrared images obtained by WISE. › Full image and caption
This cosmic cloud, known as the Soul nebula, is one of many sites of star formation within the Milky Way galaxy. It is located 3,800 light-years away from Earth and is nearly 240 light-years across. › Full image and caption

After completing its primary mission to map the infrared sky, NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has reached the expected end of its onboard supply of frozen coolant.

PASADENA, Calif. -- After completing its primary mission to map the infrared sky, NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has reached the expected end of its onboard supply of frozen coolant. Although WISE has 'warmed up,' NASA has decided the mission will still continue. WISE will now focus on our nearest neighbors -- the asteroids and comets traveling together with our solar system's planets around the sun.

"Two of our four infrared detectors still work even at warmer temperatures, so we can use those bands to continue our hunt for asteroids and comets," said Amy Mainzer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Mainzer is the principal investigator of the new phase of the mission, now known as the NEOWISE Post-Cryogenic Mission. It takes its name from the acronym for a near-Earth object, NEO, and WISE. A cryogen is a coolant used to make the detectors more sensitive. In the case of WISE, the cryogen was frozen hydrogen.

WISE launched Dec. 14, 2009, from Vandenberg Air Force Station in California aboard a Delta II launch vehicle. Its 40-centimeter (16-inch) infrared telescope scans the skies from an Earth-circling orbit crossing the poles. It has already snapped more than 1.8 million pictures at four infrared wavelengths. Currently, the survey has covered the sky about one-and-one-half times, producing a vast catalogue containing hundreds of millions of objects, from near-Earth asteroids to cool stars called "brown dwarfs," to distant, luminous galaxies.

To date, WISE has discovered 19 comets and more than 33,500 asteroids, including 120 near-Earth objects, which are those bodies with orbits that pass relatively close to Earth's path around the sun. More discoveries regarding objects outside our solar system, such as the brown dwarfs and luminous galaxies, are expected.

"The science data collected by WISE will be used by the scientific community for decades," said Jaya Bajpayee, the WISE program executive in the Astrophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "It will also provide a sky map for future observatories like NASA's James Webb Space Telescope."

The NEOWISE Post-Cryogenic Mission is designed to complete the survey of the solar system and finish the second survey of the rest of the sky at its new warmer temperature of about minus 203 degrees Celsius (minus 334 degrees Fahrenheit) using its two shortest-wavelength detectors. The survey extension will last one to four months, depending on early results.

NEOWISE will also keep observing other targets, such as the closest brown dwarfs to the sun. In addition, data from the second sky scan will help identify objects that have moved in the sky since they were first detected by WISE. This allows astronomers to pick out the brown dwarfs closest to our sun. The closer the object is, the more it will appear to move from our point of view.

The WISE science team now is analyzing millions of objects captured in the images, including many never seen before. A first batch of WISE data, covering more than half the sky, will be released to the astronomical community in spring 2011, with the rest to follow about one year later.

"WISE has provided a guidebook to the universe with thousands of targets worth viewing with a large telescope," said Edward (Ned) Wright, WISE principal investigator from UCLA. "We're working on figuring out just how far away the brown dwarfs are, and how luminous the galaxies are."

A gallery of WISE images is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/multimedia/gallery/gallery-index.html.

JPL manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for the Science Mission Directorate. 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.

More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise and http://wise.astro.ucla.edu.
› Asteroid Watch

News Media Contact

Whitney Clavin

626-395-1856

wclavin@caltech.edu

J.D. Harrington

202-358-5241

j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

2010-320

Latest News

Climate Change .

Warming Seas Are Accelerating Greenland’s Glacier Retreat

Solar System .

NASA’s Deep Space Network Welcomes a New Dish to the Family

Technology .

NASA’s DC-8 Returns to Flight

Exoplanets .

The 7 Rocky TRAPPIST-1 Planets May Be Made of Similar Stuff

Mars .

6 Things to Know About NASA’s Mars Helicopter on Its Way to Mars

Mars .

NASA to Host Virtual Briefing on February Perseverance Mars Rover Landing

Mars .

NASA InSight’s ‘Mole’ Ends Its Journey on Mars

Mars .

Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover to Capture Sounds From the Red Planet

Solar System .

NASA’s Juno Mission Expands Into the Future

Stars and Galaxies .

Citizen Scientists Help Create 3D Map of Cosmic Neighborhood

About JPL
Who We Are
Executive Council
Directors of JPL
JPL History
Documentary Series
Virtual Tour
Annual Reports
Missions
All
Current
Past
Future
News
All
Earth
Mars
Solar System
Universe
Technology
Galleries
Images
Videos
Audio
Podcasts
Infographics
Engage
JPL and the Community
Lecture Series
Public Tours
Events
Team Competitions
JPL Speakers Bureau
Topics
Solar System
Mars
Earth
Climate Change
Stars and Galaxies
Exoplanets
Technology
JPL Life
For Media
Contacts and Information
Press Kits
More
Asteroid Watch
Robotics at JPL
Subscribe to Newsletter
Social Media
Get the Latest from JPL
Follow Us

JPL is a federally funded research and development center managed for NASA by Caltech.

More from JPL
Careers Education Science & Technology Acquisitions JPL Store
Careers
Education
Science & Technology
Acquisitions
JPL Store
Related NASA Sites
Basics of Spaceflight
Climate Kids
Earth / Global Climate Change
Exoplanet Exploration
Mars Exploration
Solar System Exploration
Space Place
NASA's Eyes Visualization Project
Voyager Interstellar Mission
NASA
Caltech
Privacy
Image Policy
FAQ
Feedback
Site Manager: Veronica McGregor
Site Editors: Tony Greicius, Randal Jackson, Naomi Hartono