Many molecules in space, including organics, also have unique signatures in the infrared.Īlthough not the first infrared space telescope, Spitzer is 100 times more sensitive than its predecessors: If they are compared to feather dusters, Spitzer is the power dust-buster of the universe. Even where dust is thin, such cooler objects as exosolar planets, brown dwarfs (often called failed stars) and giant molecular clouds shine more brightly in the infrared. The absorption then heats the dust, making it glow in the infrared. That's important because dust transmits infrared starlight but absorbs visible starlight. Wallace Professor of Astronomy at Cornell and leader of Cornell's Spitzer team, an early proponent of Spitzer's infrared spectrometer instrument, believes the orbiting telescope's greatest accomplishments are yet to be revealed: "Right now everyone is working hard on individual projects connecting those requires time for reflection." Houck, who plans to throw a picnic on Spitzer's anniversary, notes that the immediate goal is accomplishing enough to inform the next infrared mission, the James Webb Space Telescope, in 2013.īy looking in the infrared - light made of "colors" below the red end of the visible spectrum - Spitzer sees what optical telescopes like Hubble can't. Spitzer is the last of NASA's four Great Observatories (including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and the Chandra X-ray Observatory). 25 four years ago, NASA - in conjunction with Cornell, the University of Arizona, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Ball Aerospace - launched the $800 million Spitzer Space Telescope, an infrared telescope orbiting the sun that will remain operational until its essential liquid helium coolant runs out in early 2009. That's a lot of dust, and a big problem for astronomers trying to see through it.Ĭomplicating matters more, the dust itself is invisible, disguising dynamic celestial systems as dark, seemingly empty swaths of sky. In space, entire planetary systems (a billion miles wide), star clusters (a million billion miles wide) and even galaxies (a billion billion miles wide) are enshrouded in dust. The universe is full of dust, and it's not all on terrestrial bookshelves.
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