Fact Sheet
First Snapshot
Stars and a faint gas cloud highlight the first look at the sky from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), a new space telescope. NASA unveiled the image on January 6, at an astronomy conference in Washington, D.C. WISE will image the entire sky at infrared wavelengths, which are invisible to the human eye. The infrared is produced by relatively cool objects, such as the clouds of gas and dust that give birth to stars, the disks of dust around stars that give birth to planets, and the "failed stars" known as brown dwarfs. This view, which covers an area roughly three times the size of the Moon, is in the southern constellation Carina. WISE was launched in December, and is beginning its science mission after a 30-day checkout in orbit. [NASA/JPL/WISE Team]
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