First Light
Here you go, folks!
Starry-eyed surprise
If an ordinary picture is worth a thousand words, this one is worth at least a thousand stars!
From the press release:
“This infrared snapshot of a region in the constellation Carina near the Milky Way was taken shortly after NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) ejected its cover. The “first-light” picture shows thousands of stars and covers an area three times the size of the moon. WISE will take more than a million similar pictures covering the whole sky.
The image was captured as the spacecraft stared in a fixed direction, in order to help calibrate its pointing system. The mission’s survey will be done while the satellite continuously scans the sky, and an internal scan mirror counteracts the motion to create freeze-frame images. The team is working now to match the motions of the spacecraft and the scan mirror precisely.
This eight-second exposure shows infrared light from three of WISE’s four wavelength bands: Blue, green and red correspond to 3.4, 4.6, and 12 microns, respectively.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA”
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More soon, including a comparison of this new WISE image vs. the old catalogs it will replace: COBE and IRAS.
January 6th, 2010 at 9:40 pm
Amazing =) Wish I had that view every night.
They need to put you in charge of the @WISE_Mission twitter acct. They seem to have fallen off the face of the earth. I seem to get my best WISE news here =)
January 6th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
i like green spot
but dont no wht it mean
January 6th, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Congrats!!!
January 6th, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Thanks Amy! It is great to see the remarkable images from the WISE instrument that we have had a part in. As a member of the “Cryo Crew” it is very rewarding indeed to know that I and many many others had a part in its success. I want to wish you and the other members of the science team the best as you continue to discover the mysteries that WISE uncovers.
January 6th, 2010 at 10:22 pm
Every first light image are exciting, but this is awesome!
And It’s looking different, very dusty ^^
I suppose, you will able reduce the grains from the picture when you combining more and more picture together.
When you finish the whole image will be a nice smooth panorama
January 6th, 2010 at 10:26 pm
Dr Mainzer!!
That photo is absolutely spectacular. The universe really is a beautiful place isn’t it? I can’t wait to see what other poetry inducing images WISE will reveal. Your head must be spinning! Congratulations on all the success and keep it going!
January 7th, 2010 at 1:13 am
Wow, that is amazing.
Are the wavelengths you capture really that narrow, and do they correspond to some specific type of matter you are trying to find? For example, brown dwarfs emit radiation at 4.6 microns?
January 7th, 2010 at 1:56 am
Hi Amy
thanks for shareing the picture. Congrats for Wise succes.
Happy for u..
Cheers.
January 7th, 2010 at 4:22 am
WOW, INCREDIBLY DETAILED. BEAUTIFUL PICTURE!
Dear Amy,
Is the bright star Canopus, the second brightest star in the sky after Sirius “Dog Star”? If so is it classed as a Main Sequence Dwarf? You mentioned the constellation Carina is near the Milky Way, tho in which galaxy?
Thank You, Dr. Mainzer *JLP and the WISE Team.
Happy Exploring*
January 7th, 2010 at 4:36 am
This is inspiring. Thank you for sharing.
January 7th, 2010 at 4:43 am
Holy fajita, that’s pretty. Living in a city, I almost forget there are any stars at all, yet the sky is crawling with them.
Thanks for sharing, and I can’t wait to see more.
January 7th, 2010 at 4:46 am
“Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight.
I wish I may, I wish I might have the wish I wish tonight.”
I wish for paradigm shifting discoveries that advance humanity’s understanding of our place in the cosmos.
http://info.wlu.ca/~wwwpsych/gnelson/paradigm-shift-cartoon.gif
8^)
January 7th, 2010 at 5:32 am
Incredible… more light than darkness! I wonder, how many light-years separate the foremost to farthest objects in this image alone?? And while pretty pictures are nice, what you are doing is far better; like providing a sentry for Earth! When paths start getting tracked, now that will be exciting. Thanks for letting lay=persons, like myself, feel connected to this project. You rock!
January 7th, 2010 at 6:55 am
Hi Amy
Very exciting. Is there anything particularly interesting in this picture? Will it be possible for the WISE team to dim out brighter objects that might hide dimmer objects, like brown dwarfs?
Happy “cosmic treasure” hunting!
Gerrit
January 7th, 2010 at 7:38 am
I’m just gonna go all teenie-blogger and say this:
<3
(:
January 7th, 2010 at 7:48 am
Kinda cool:
http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/
January 7th, 2010 at 10:33 am
Congratulations to everybody involved with the WISE space telescope project!!!
Exciting times as with Kepler, but great to read the cover opened as planned.
British monthly magazine Spaceflight issue February 2010 has an article on WISE…
Hoping to see the Cosmic Diary blog continue in the new year …
Philip
January 7th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
A stunning first image. I wasn’t expecting anything so incredibly detailed right from the get-go! I guess 4mp will do just fine indeed.The thumbnail image doesn’t do it justice; incredible number of stars when viewed in fullsize. It’s actually a very beautiful picture too, nicely framed. Can’t wait to see more!
stephen, england
p.s looks like the perfect image for a book cover to me
January 7th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
GREAT! Big congratulations on getting your first image!
I was taking a look on some info on the Spitzer Space Telescope the other day, and noted that their deepest IR imager array is “only” 8 microns - so with WISE’s 12 microns, it will be interesting to see the difference in observations.
If you could, can you describe a bit about what it is we’re looking at? If this is a picture of the Carina constellation, that would make the bright star Canopus. The rest of the constellation is off to the left of Canopus, looking like the side profile a Klingon Bird of Prey, if Canopus is the command deck up front (/nerd).
The red channel is so cloudy - is that heat radiating from interstellar dust? It looks a little noisy, too - was that channel cranked up to help balance the others in the false color image?
Also, Eta Carinae should be in that image somewhere (not sure where, just know it’s in Carina). Do you think WISE be able to gain any insight into its erratic fluctuations during WISE’s multiple passes?
Sorry for so many questions - it’s just so fascinating when you get into the details of the device and what it’s looking at….
January 8th, 2010 at 3:20 am
Dr. Mainzer,
I believe Francis Barone said it best when he said, “Holy crap!”
Congratulations and best wishes for WISE.
T
January 8th, 2010 at 4:15 am
Ok!
This is definitely awesome!!!
January 8th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
Amy,
Beautiful snapshot of one small spot in our universe!
Although many of those that have interest in this field, both professionals and hobbyists, know the ins and outs of the instrumentation and calibration needed to get something so gorgeous, its nice to just enjoy looking up and out once in awhile.
Thanks for helping to bring the universe just a little closer to us!
Congratulations to you and the whole WISE team to “Keep Us Moving Forward.”
January 9th, 2010 at 5:19 am
Hi,
This certainly is a stunningly beautiful picture. Nicely done.
Down here in Australia at the moment, Carina creeps over the south-eastern horizon. I had the great fortune to see the Eta Carina nebula and the open cluster 2216 (I think??!??) with my own eyes the other night under a completely dark country sky. My tiny brain simply cannot comprehend what I am looking at. Its even more breathtaking when you see it with your own eyes.
Best wishes,
Andrew
January 11th, 2010 at 3:14 am
Amateur astronomer before watching U on the history channel now striving for a phd.
January 13th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
Absolutely beautiful! Thanks for sharing this with all of us.
January 15th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
Amy,
Beautiful ‘First Light!’ I wonder what is shining brighter, the WISE team or the stars? With a million more pictures to be taken…how many will take your breath away? All…
January 16th, 2010 at 7:32 pm
Wow! That is spectacular. I am taking astronomy in college right now - this is so inspiring!
January 16th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Hi, Kent! Many, many thanks for all of your hard work. We are elated with the results of it. This image is only one of the zillions that we’ve been admiring over the past week. This is only the beginning.
Bill and Gerrit, the WISE wavelengths are tuned to facilitate specific science projects. For example, the 3.4 micron channel is centered around one of the absorption features of the molecule methane, which is found in abundance in extremely cold brown dwarf atmospheres. The 4.6 micron wavelength is designed to capture the much brighter part of a brown dwarf’s spectrum, where there is comparatively little molecular abosorption. So brown dwarfs can readily be found by looking for sources which are dark at 3.4 microns but bright at 4.6 microns. By contrast, most normal stars are brighter at 3.4 microns and dimmer at 4.6 microns.
Philip, I’ve talked to the folks who run the Cosmic Diaries, and it sounds like we are going to continue the project! Not sure for how long or whether things will change format at all, but I plan to continue blogging for the moment. Besides, it would be terrible to stop now when there are so many stories to tell!
The image features a region in the Carina contellation about three times the size of the full Moon. The star is not Eta Carina, nor the Dog Star, but an old, variable star called V482 Carina. It’s just barely visible the naked eye on a dark night. The red, diffuse glowing stuff is dust and gas, and the “graininess” is real structure, not from the detectors. It is bright in our 12 micron channel, so your eyes can’t see this at all.
As for Spitzer, its longest wavelength channel was all the way out at 160 microns, but now that the cryogen (liquid helium) is gone, the longest wavelength available to observers is 4.5 microns.
January 18th, 2010 at 1:17 am
Apologies for my getting the max wavelength wrong on Spitzer - I guess I was looking at the wrong instrument. From now on, I’ll leave any comments on telescope technical details to the pros….
And all those sharp specks on the 12 u channel is actual structure, items only visible down in the IR spectrum, but not in visible light (eh, I think) - all I can say is, “wow”! That might be common knowledge among those who work in astronomy, but to “average joes” like me, that’s pretty amazing . It makes one realize the SCALE of just how much “out there” stuff is, ah, “out there”.
You mentioned the variable V482 Carina… just as an aside, I’m doing a consulting job over in Belgium right now, and on the bus back from work a few days ago just happened to sit next to Dr. Conny Aerts . She is an expert on variable stars, as well as astroseismology (in addition to just being very nice, and patient with my enthusiasm for the field).
That got me reading up on the science of variable stars, which is what I was doing when your blog updated. It isn’t a big deal, but just of a kind of funny coincidence for someone who only recently started following astronomy again… and goes to show, you can meet the most interesting people on the bus!