[AstroNet] About WISE

[Maciej Soltynski]

The Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is a NASA-funded infrared-wavelength astronomical space telescope which was launched on 14 December 2009. The Earth-orbiting satellite carries a 40 cm (16 inch) diameter infrared-sensitive telescope, which will survey the entire sky over the course of six months through images made in the 3 to 25 ?m wavelength range. The telescope's image detectors are designed to make the survey at least 1 000 times more sensitive to infrared sky features than the sky surveys of previous major infrared space survey telescopes such as the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), AKARI and COBE. The WISE telescope and detectors are kept very cold (below 15° Centigrade above absolute zero) by a cryostat filled with solid hydrogen.

 

The complete mission will create images of 99% of the sky, with at least eight images made of each position on the sky in order to increase accuracy. The spacecraft is in a 525 km, circular, polar, sun-synchronous orbit for its 10 month mission, during which it will take at least 1.5 million images, one every 11 seconds. Each image will cover a 47 arcminute field of view, an area of the sky 3 times larger than the full Moon. 

 

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. The image library produced will contain data on the local Solar System, the Milky Way Galaxy, and the more distant universe. Among the objects WISE will study are asteroids, cool, dim stars such as brown dwarfs, and the most luminous infrared galaxies.

 

(From the WISE Mission home page http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/index.html and Wikipedia)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.saasta.ac.za/pipermail/astronet/attachments/20091218/aac932d1/attachment.htm>