They're Just Really Big Cameras, Really

The big news yesterday concerned the launch of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) from Vandenberg Air Force Base. It was such big news that it was one of the featured stories on Yahoo!'s homepage. Also, CBS News has a pretty great story on the whole affair, which you can find here.

In essence, the thing is going to circle the planet over our heads for a few months, constantly snapping pictures, until it has photographed the entire night sky. The really cool thing about this, though, is that it will be doing so pretty far out into the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum rather than in the visible wavelength range. Why is this cool? Well, we can see lots of neat heavenly bodies with telescopes here on Earth and with those outside the atmosphere, like the Hubble, but we're only seeing objects that emit a lot of light, mostly in the UV, visible, and near-infrared range. The WISE craft will be taking images in the wavelenth range of 3.4 - 22 micron, and with unprecedented clarity. What this means is that the craft will be able to image things that don't necessarily emit visible light, but instead emit heat. So it is expected that many undiscovered objects will be found, such as asteroids, failed stars, and planets, just to name a few. And it's going to do this for the entire night sky, as observed from Earth.

And speaking of infrared imaging of space, things seem to be coming along nicely with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The Webb Telescope is the observatory that is slated to take the place of the Hubble Space Telescope in 2014. It will take over the tasks of the Hubble, but with infrared-optimized equipment. Like the Hubble, it will take pretty pictures of distant extraterrestrial objects, but it will also be capable of analyzing those objects much more thoroughly. In fact, using spectral analysis techniques - sort of like the now-common mass spectroscopy techniques used to determine the chemical make-up of all sorts of things in laboratories all over the world - to examine far-off planets, it is hoped that the Webb scope will be able to find places that could potentially harbor life.

NASA has posted all kinds of interesting facts and information about the upcoming space telescope on their website. However, I would recommend keeping an eye on their YouTube page, which as of right now, has a couple of really great videos. I would imagine, though, that as pieces are developed and assembled and as the telescope begins to take shape, we'll be seeing more videos uploaded. I won't exactly be waiting with bated breat, since I'm going to miss the Hubble (I mean, I kind of feel like we grew up together). But what can I say? The videos are pretty cool.