Discover Top Posts Tagged with #neowise

NEOWISE: Comet NEOWISE, discovered by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, is seen before sunrise over Washington (July 12, 2020)

#neowise #astronomy #astrophotography #krakenmare #space #nasa #comets #comet #comet neowise

Comet NEOWISE Over Observatory, July 2020, Colorado

I shot probably 40 long exposures over the course of an hour as I walked around and fired a handheld flash from different angles and distances trying to get exactly the exposure I was looking for.

Just a few days ago, NASA decommissioned NEOWISE. A type of space telescope, NEOWISE is less well-known than some of its siblings but equally as important. Its mission began in 2009 to map the night sky using infrared, a task it completed with incredible skill. Once its infrared scanner could no longer be used for mapping, it was then turned to our solar system, scanning for near-earth objects that could potentially pose a threat to our planet.

NEOWISE detected and mapped tens of thousands of objects within our solar system, including several hundred near-earth objects which were identified for the first time by NEOWISE. One of the objects it discovered was a comet which researchers named after the telescope itself. Some of you may have seen the comet NEOWISE as it passed by earth in 2020.

Due to increases in solar activity, the surveyor NEOWISE is now falling out of orbit, and will likely burn up in the atmosphere later this year.

Seen here is the last photograph it took before it was turned off for the final time:

Sources/Further reading: Smithsonian, NASA, Caltech

#nasa #space program #neowise

WISE Take-II

JWST isn't the only IR telescope to be launched into space, it followed a number including Spitzer and WISE more.

WISE (Wide Field Survey Explorer) was sent out to find some of the most luminous objects in the Universe, but was put into deep sleep in 2011 only to be re-activated and renamed in 2013, as NEOWISE, the NEO being Near Earth Objects.

So for a decade it searched out those near earth objects that could one day head our way, and was finally retired this year.

Recently searching through it's archives, many beautiful images of commonly observed parts of our night sky were revealed and published.

Above is NGC 2170, but here's a collection of some of the others.

The California Nebula, with the hot young star Menkib (Xi Persei).

The Gecko in the Lizard, LBN 437 (The Gecko Nebula) in the constellation of Lacerta (The Lizard).

The Vela Dust Cloud.

It's often the case that telescopes make recorded observations that sit in archives as data, not being converted into an image, the more data we obtain, the more discoveries in the future may come from observations made long before them.

#astronomy #jwst #neowise #neo #nebula #star formation

Double Tails of Comet Neowise

l Aleix Roig l Prades, France l 2020

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'While we are sad to see this brave mission come to an end, we are excited for the future scientific discoveries it has opened by setting th

A prolific NASA asteroid-hunting mission has come to an end. Engineers sent a final command to the agency's NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) spacecraft on Thursday (Aug. 8), ordering the probe to turn off its transmitter after nearly 15 years of operation in low Earth orbit. "The NEOWISE mission has been an extraordinary success story as it helped us better understand our place in the universe by tracking asteroids and comets that could be hazardous for us on Earth," Nicola Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement on Thursday.

#Science #Space #Astronomy #Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer #NEOWISE #National Aeronautics and Space Administration #NASA