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NASA Releases Dazzling Images From New Space Telescope



 
 
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Old December 18th 03, 08:02 PM
Ron Baalke
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Default NASA Releases Dazzling Images From New Space Telescope


MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Jane Platt (818) 354-0880
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Donald Savage (202) 358-1727
NASA Headquarters, Washington

News Release: 2003-170 Dec. 18, 2003

NASA Releases Dazzling Images From New Space Telescope

A new window to the universe has opened with today's release of the
first dazzling images from NASA's newly named Spitzer Space Telescope,
formerly known as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility.

The first observations, of a glowing stellar nursery; a swirling,
dusty galaxy; a disc of planet-forming debris; and organic material in
the distant universe, demonstrate the power of the telescope's
infrared detectors to capture cosmic features never seen before.

The Spitzer Space Telescope was also officially named today after the
late Dr. Lyman Spitzer, Jr. He was one of the 20th century's most
influential scientists, and in the mid-1940s, he first proposed
placing telescopes in space.

"NASA's newest Great Observatory is open for business, and it is
beginning to take its place at the forefront of science," said NASA's
Associate Administrator for Space Science, Dr. Ed Weiler. "Like
Hubble, Compton and Chandra, the new Spitzer Space Telescope will soon
be making major discoveries, and, as these first images show, should
excite the public with views of the cosmos like we've never had
before."

"The Spitzer Space Telescope is working extremely well. The scientists
who are starting to use it deeply appreciate the ingenuity and
dedication of the thousands of people devoted to development and
operations of the mission," said Dr. Michael Werner, project scientist
for the Spitzer Space Telescope at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif.

Launched Aug. 25 from Cape Canaveral, Fla., the Spitzer Space
Telescope is the fourth of NASA's Great Observatories, a program
designed to paint a more comprehensive picture of the cosmos using
different wavelengths of light.

While the other Great Observatories have probed the universe with
visible light (Hubble Space Telescope), gamma rays (Compton Gamma Ray
Observatory) and X-rays (Chandra X-ray Observatory), the Spitzer Space
Telescope observes the cosmos in the infrared. Spitzer's unprecedented
sensitivity allows it to sense infrared radiation, or heat, from the
most distant, cold and dust-obscured celestial objects. Today's
initial images revealed the versatility of the telescope and its three
science instruments. The images:

-- Resembling a creature on the run with flames streaming behind it,
the Spitzer image of a dark globule in the emission nebula IC 1396 is
in spectacular contrast to the view seen in visible light. Spitzer's
infrared detectors unveiled the brilliant hidden interior of this
opaque cloud of gas and dust for the first time, exposing
never-before-seen young stars.

-- The dusty, star-studded arms of a nearby spiral galaxy, Messier 81,
are illuminated in a Spitzer image. Red regions in the spiral arms
represent infrared emissions from the dustier parts of the galaxy
where new stars are forming. The image shows the power of Spitzer to
explore regions invisible in optical light, and to study star
formation on a galactic scale.

-- Spitzer revealed, in its entirety, a massive disc of dusty debris
encircling the nearby star Fomalhaut. Such debris discs are the
leftover material from the building of a planetary system. While other
telescopes have imaged the outer Fomalhaut disc, none was able to
provide a full picture of the inner region. Spitzer's ability to
detect dust at various temperatures allows it to fill in this missing
gap, providing astronomers with insight into the evolution of
planetary systems.

-- Data from Spitzer of the young star HH 46-IR, and from a distant
galaxy 3.25 billion light-years away, show the presence of water and
small organic molecules not only in the here and now, but, for the
first time, far back in time when life on Earth first emerged.

JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Office of
Space Science, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the
Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena. Major partners are Lockheed Martin Corporation, Sunnyvale,
Calif.; Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation, Boulder, Colo.;
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; Boeing North
America (now DRS Technologies, Inc.) Anaheim, Calif.; the University
of Arizona, Tucson; and Raytheon Vision Systems, Goleta, Calif. The
instrument principal investigators are Dr. Giovanni Fazio,
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass.; Dr.
James Houck, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.; and Dr. George Rieke,
University of Arizona, Tucson.

The images are available at

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media.../visuals.shtml

Additional information about the Spitzer Space Telescope is available at

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/

-end-

 




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