NASA releases a few WISE
pics... wow!
A diverse cast of cosmic characters is showcased in
the first survey images NASA released Wednesday from its
Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.
Since
WISE began its scan of the entire sky in infrared light on
Jan. 14, the space telescope has beamed back more than a
quarter of a million raw, infrared images. Four new,
processed pictures illustrate a sampling of the mission's
targets -- a wispy comet, a bursting star-forming cloud, the
grand Andromeda galaxy and a faraway cluster of hundreds of
galaxies.
"WISE has worked superbly," said Ed
Weiler, associate administrator of the Science Mission
Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "These first
images are proving the spacecraft's secondary mission of
helping to track asteroids, comets and other stellar objects
will be just as critically important as its primary mission
of surveying the entire sky in infrared."
One image
shows the beauty of a comet called Siding Spring. As the
comet parades toward the sun, it sheds dust that glows in
infrared light visible to WISE. The comet's tail, which
stretches about 10 million miles, looks like a streak of red
paint. A bright star appears below it in blue.
"We've got a candy store of images coming down from space,"
said Edward (Ned) Wright of UCLA, the principal investigator
for WISE. "Everyone has their favorite flavors, and we've
got them all."
During its survey, the mission is
expected to find perhaps dozens of comets, including some
that ride along in orbits that take them somewhat close to
Earth's path around the sun. WISE will help unravel clues
locked inside comets about how our solar system came to be.
Another image shows a bright and choppy star-forming
region called NGC 3603, lying 20,000 light-years away in the
Carina spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. This star-forming
factory is churning out batches of new stars, some of which
are monstrously massive and hotter than the sun. The hot
stars warm the surrounding dust clouds, causing them to glow
at infrared wavelengths.
WISE will see hundreds of similar star-making regions in
our galaxy, helping astronomers piece together a picture of
how stars are born. The observations also provide an
important link to understanding violent episodes of star
formation in distant galaxies. Because NGC 3603 is much
closer, astronomers use it as a lab to probe the same type
of action that is taking place billions of light-years away.
Traveling farther out from our Milky Way, the third
new image shows our nearest large neighbor, the Andromeda
spiral galaxy. Andromeda is a bit bigger than our Milky Way
and about 2.5 million light-years away. The new picture
highlights WISE's wide field of view -- it covers an area
larger than 100 full moons and even shows other smaller
galaxies near Andromeda, all belonging to our "local group"
of more than about 50 galaxies. WISE will capture the entire
local group.
MORE: FROM NASA
Google News...
If you see it on Google, its true, right? =]
Didn't he give himself a "B-" also???
Link to first story:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/obama-touts-stimulus-criticises-hypocritical-opponents-20100218-oiyl.html
Link to second story:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/18/news/economy/initial_claims/
MORE: google news
A REALLY lucky guy!
These pictures were sent to me. It seems that in
the wind, a gate that is normally wide open had blown over
the roadway a bit Things were bad for this guy, but
his day could have been a whole lot worse!
According to the email, he
wasn't hurt!
MORE: From an email.
(Thanks, Mike!)
Greetings!
