Deep space visitor to our solar system captured by space telescope

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7278791/Deep-space-visitor-to-our-so...


A space telescope sent into orbit around the Earth to map previously unseen parts of the heavens has sent back its first images, including one of a deep space comet racing through our solar system.


By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Published: 2:40PM GMT 20 Feb 2010






The Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) began its scan of the entire sky on January 14 in a bid to help astronomers spot previously unseen objects both inside and outside our solar system.

The 9ft long space telescope is using infrared light, which cannot be seen with the human eye, to build up a map of the entire sky visible from its orbit 300 miles above the Earth.

Among the first images to be beamed back were the red streak of a comet, called Siding Spring, as it races through our solar system, leaving a 10 million mile long tail of glowing dust in its wake.

The giant lump of ice and dust originated from a frozen cloud of comets surrounding our solar system called the Oort Cloud, but at some point was knocked out of its orbit and was sent careering closer to the sun.

In December last year Siding Spring passed 116 million miles from the Earth, just one and a quarter times the distance of the Earth from the sun.

It's glowing red tail is caused by light from the sun causing it to shed ice and dust as it travels through the solar system.

During its six month mission, WISE is expected to find dozens of previously unseen comets, including those that may come close to the Earth's own orbit around the sun. WISE has already discovered one near-Earth asteroid and a new comet.

Another picture gives a colourful glimpse of the closest large galaxy neighbouring our own. The massive Andromeda galaxy, which is also known as Messier 31, is about 2.5 million light years away and bigger than the Milky Way.

The galaxy's spiralling arms can be seen made up of blue mature stars while yellow and red dust glows as it is heated by newborn stars.

During its mission, WISE is expected to capture images of all 50 galaxies that surround our own and make up the so called Local Group of galaxies.

In another image, a churning yellow mass of gas and dust gives a new insight into a star forming factory around 20,000 light years away from our solar system.

“All these pictures tell a story about our dusty origins and destiny,” said Peter Eisenhardt, the WISE project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“WISE sees dusty comets and rocky asteroids tracing the formation and evolution of our solar system. We can map thousands of forming and dying solar systems across our entire galaxy.

"We can see patterns of star formation across other galaxies, and waves of star-bursting galaxies in clusters millions of light years away.”

The WISE mission will scan the sky one-and-a-half times by October, taking nearly 1,500,000 pictures. By that time the frozen coolant needed to chill its instruments will be depleted and the telescope is expected to slowly die.

“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.”