WISE

WISE

Here is the Wide field Survey Explorer, I have gathered the most current and up to date reseach on this topic. Edited and published by Jacob Kellner Astronomy 10 May 22,2012

1.[] WISE is a NASA-funded Explorer mission that will provide a vast storehouse of knowledge about the solar system, the Milky Way, and the Universe. Among the objects WISE will study are asteroids, the coolest and dimmest stars, and the most luminous galaxies. WISE is an unmanned satellite carrying an infrared-sensitive telescope that will image the entire sky. Since objects around room temperature emit infrared radiation, the WISE telescope and detectors are kept very cold (below -430° F /15 Kelvins, which is only 15° Centigrade above absolute zero) by a cryostat -- like an ice chest but filled with solid hydrogen instead of ice. Solar panels will provide WISE with the electricity it needs to operate, and will always point toward the Sun. Orbiting several hundred miles above the dividing line between night and day on Earth, the telescope will look out at right angles to the Sun and will always point away from Earth. As WISE orbits from the North pole to the equator to the South pole and then back up to the North pole, the telescope will sweep out a circle in the sky. As the Earth moves around the Sun, this circle will move around the sky, and after six months WISE will have observed the whole sky. As WISE sweeps along the circle a small mirror scans in the opposite direction, capturing an image of the sky onto an infrared sensitive digital camera which will take a picture every 11 seconds. Each picture will cover an area of the sky 3 times larger than the full Moon. After 6 months WISE will have taken nearly 1,500,000 pictures covering the entire sky. Each picture will have one megapixel at each of four different wavelengths that range from 5 to 35 times longer than the longest waves the human eye can see. Data taken by WISE will be downloaded by radio transmission 4 times per day to computers on the ground which will combine the many images taken by WISE into an atlas covering the entire celestial sphere and a list of all the detected objects.



2.[] By October 2010, WISE hydrogen coolant and original NASA funding ran out, and the proposed WISE warm mission, using remaining functionality, was not approved by NASA.[6home] Rather than abandon the spacecraft, the NASA Planetary division stepped in with funding for a shorter fourth month mission extension called NEOWISE, to search for small solar system bodies close to Earth's orbit.[6home] WISE served as a replacement for the Wide Field Infrared Explorer (WIRE), which failed within hours of reaching orbit in March 1999.[7home] In certain measurements, WISE is over 1,000 times more sensitive than prior infrared space __surveys__ such as IRAS, AKARI, and COBE's DIRBE.[8home] During its active mission it found dozens of previously unknown asteroids every day.[9home] Over 33,__500__ new asteroids and comets were discovered, and over 154,000 solar system objects were observed by WISE by October 2010.[10home] The All-Sky data were released on 14 March 2012, providing processed images, source catalogs, and raw data to the public.[11home][12home][13home] [14home] The first Earth Trojan asteroid was discovered using WISE data, announced on July 27, 2011.[15home][16home] A new type of star called Y dwarfs are discovered with WISE, announced August 23, 2011.[17home][1 [[image:http://www.greenpacks.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/nasa-wise.jpg width="500" height="363"]]
 * Wide-field Infrared Survey __Explorer__** (**WISE**) is a NASA infrared-wavelength astronomical space telescope launched on December 14, 2009,[1home][2home][3home] and decommissioned/hibernated on February 17, 2011 when its transmitter was turned off.[4home] The US$320 million mission launched an Earth-orbiting satellite with a 40 cm (16 in) diameter infrared telescope, which performed an all-sky astronomical survey with images in 3, 5, 12 and 22 μm wavelength range bands, over 10 months.[5home] The initial mission length was limited by its hydrogen coolant, but a secondary post-crygenic mission continued for four more months.[4home][6home]



3.[] This is a mosaic of the images covering the entire sky as observed by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), part of its All-Sky Data Release. The sky can be thought of as a sphere that surrounds us in three dimensions. To make a map of the sky, astronomers project it into two dimensions. Many different methods can be used to project a spherical surface into a 2-D map. The projection used in this image of the sky is called Aitoff, named after the geographer who invented it. It takes the 3-D sky sphere and slices open one hemisphere, and then flattens the whole thing out into an oval shape. Any projection creates distortions, so people tend to use a particular projection type based on where in the resulting map the distortions are minimal. This map is centered on the Milky Way Galaxy. The plane of the Galaxy runs along the equator, and the center of the Galaxy is at the center of the map, where projection distortions are minimal. The distortions are most pronounced at the edges of the map. The right and left edges of this oval shape are the same location in the sky. A second projection of this image is also available, called equirectangular. This method projects the sky into a rectangular shape with Cartesian coordinates, and is useful for planetariums that may wish to display the image on their domes. In this mosaic, the Milky Way Galaxy runs horizontally across this map. The Milky Way is shaped like a disk and the Solar System is located in that disk about two-thirds of the way out from the center. So we see the Milky Way as a band running through the sky. As we look toward the center of the Galaxy we are looking through more of the disk than when we are looking at large angles away from the center, and you can see a noticeable increase in stars (colored blue-green) toward the center of the image. There are some artifacts worth noting in the image. For the image atlas, moving objects such as asteroids and comets were removed. However, some slower moving, bright objects did leave behind residuals. Residuals of the planets Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter are visible in this image as bright red spots off the plane of the Galaxy at the 1:00, 2:00 and 7:00 positions, respectively. In addition, at several locations in the image there are small rectangular shaped features that result from the difficulty in matching background levels of individual atlas frames. With the exception of a few Solar System objects, all of the celestial bodies highlighted in previous featured images from WISE are visible in this map. The annotated version of this map shows the locations of about half of the featured images (the rest were omitted for clarity). Clicking on the name of the object in the annotated map above will open a new browser window showing the featured image for that object. Three of the four wavelengths surveyed by WISE were used to create this image. The colors used in this image represent specific wavelengths of infrared light. Cyan (blue-green) represents light emitted predominantly from stars and galaxies at a wavelength of 3.4 microns. Green and red represent light mostly emitted by dust at 12 and 22 microns, respectively.
 * March 14, 2012 - Mapping the Infrared Universe: The Entire WISE Sky**

4.[] A prolific sky-mapping telescope that has spent more than a year scanning the heavens for [|asteroids], comets and other cosmic objects received its last command today (Feb. 17). NASA shut down its WISE spacecraft – short for [|Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer] – at 3:00 p.m. EST (2000 UTC) today. The mission's principal investigator, Ned Wright of the University of California in Los Angeles, sent the final command to the now-hibernating spacecraft, according to an update from the WISE mission's official Twitter account. "The WISE spacecraft will remain in hibernation without ground contacts awaiting possible future use," NASA officials said via Twitter. WISE launched on Dec. 14, 2009 to begin a 10-month mission to collect data to be stitched together into a composite map of the entire sky. The spacecraft surveyed the cosmos in infrared light, which allowed it to peer through dense layers of dust to capture [|stunning space photos] of previously unseen objects in unprecedented detail.

5.[] Launched in December of 2009, the WISE spacecraft spent over a year imaging the entire sky. WISE orbited the Earth several hundred miles above the dividing line between night and day on Earth, carrying an infrared-sensitive telescope that was kept very cold (below -430º F / 15º K) by a cryostat which is like an ice chest but filled with solid hydrogen instead of ice. Looking at right angles to the Sun, the infrared-sensitive telescope pointed away from Earth allowing WISE to observe the whole sky in just six months. Capturing an image every 11 seconds, each picture covered an area of the sky 3 times larger than the full moon. Each picture had one megapixel resolution at each of four wavelengths that ranged from 5 to 35 times longer than the longest waves that the human eye can see. The data taken by WISE was downloaded by radio transmission four times per day and combined into an atlas covering the entire celestial sphere. Besides __surveying__ the infrared sky, WISE also had a second purpose. The NEOWISE Survey used the infrared telescope to survey the small bodies, asteroids, and comets in our solar system. After completing its primary mission to map the infrared sky, WISE reached the expected end of its onboard supply of frozen hydrogen coolant in October of 2010. Two of the four infrared detectors were still viable at the warmer temperatures, allowing WISE to spend several more months completing the NEOWISE Post-Cryogenic mission, scanning for near-Earth objects. WISE was decommissioned in February of 2011. During the course of the mission, WISE took millions of infrared images. It discovered 20 new comets, more than 33,000 asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, and 134 near-Earth objects (NEOs). NEOs are asteroids and comets with orbits that come within 45 million kilometers (28 million miles) of Earth’s path around the Sun. The science team is now analyzing millions of objects captured in the WISE images. The first batch of WISE data, covering slightly more than half the sky, was released to the astronomical community in spring 2011, with the rest to follow one year later.

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