Gallery: Top 10 Deep-Space Photos From Infrared Telescope's Final Days
01cepheus-nebula
Oh WISE, we hardly knew you. After less than a year of sending us stunning infrared views, NASA's [Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/main/index.html) ran out of the frozen hydrogen that kept it cool enough to peer through the dusty clouds of deep space. WISE is far from finished, however. NASA announced in a press release Oct. 4 that two out of four of the orbiting observatory's detectors still work, even at warmer temperatures. The telescope will soldier on as NEOWISE, hunting for Near-Earth Objects (or NEOs) like asteroids and comets. The extended mission will get a one-month trial run, and if that goes well, it will keep observing until the end of January. Despite its small size -- you could fit the telescope under your arm like a large purse -- and short mission, WISE has already scanned the whole sky one and a half times. As of yesterday, it had observed 153,726 solar system objects, [Amanda Mainzer](http://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Mainzer/) of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported at the American Astronomical Society's [Division for Planetary Sciences meeting](http://dps.aas.org/meetings/2010). WISE has also discovered 19 new comets and more than [33,500 new asteroids](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/08/asteroid-animation/), including 120 that swoop relatively close to Earth. There are millions of objects still lurking in the data, many of which have never been seen before. Even without the life extension, WISE's data pile will keep astronomers busy for decades. "We're pretty pleased with that, for the little mission that could," Mainzer said. Mainzer hinted that we should see some new astrophysics results from WISE pretty soon. Still, we'll miss getting new images of swoopy swirls of warm gas and dust, invisible to human eyes. Here's a retrospective of our 10 favorite WISE images of deep space. __Above:__ WISE penetrated curtains of dust that block visible light to capture this hidden star-forming region in the constellation Cepheus. The more formal name for the central portion of this feature is IRAS 22298+6505. This image was just released on September 29.
02scorpion-nebula
This image of reflection nebula DG 129 was released September 21. It looks eerily like a giant cosmic hand making an "OK" sign. The bright star on the right with the greenish haze is Pi Scorpii, one of the claws of the scorpion in the constellation Scorpius. It is actually a triple-star system about 500 light-years away. By the time this image was taken, the WISE's 22-micrometer detector was too warm to produce good images. Here, blue represents radiation at 3.4 microns, green is 4.6 microns, and red is 12-microns.
03lbn
This gorgeous nebula goes by the rather pedestrian name LBN 114.55+00.22. LBN stands for "Lynds Bright Nebula," named for the astronomer who cataloged it in 1965. Unlike reflection nebulae like DG 129, which reflects light from nearby stars, this nebula emits light from hot ionized gas that glows as it cools. Dust blocks the view of most of this nebula in visible light. But that dust is also warmed by the light of the young stars it conceals, giving WISE a view of its beautiful infrared colors. This image was released Sep. 16.
04rosette-nebula
The Rosette nebula, located within the constellation Monoceros (the Unicorn), glows appropriately pink in this image released August 25. The flower-shaped nebula, also known by the less romantic name NGC 2237, is a huge star-forming cloud of dust and gas in the Milky Way somewhere between 4,500 to 5,000 light-years away. WISE picked up the rosy glow of the nebula's warm dust clouds, but the Rosette nebula is visible from the ground with a small telescope or a good pair of binoculars.
05afgl-490
This cluster of newborn stars cocooned in dust and gas is called AFGL 490. It lies about 2,300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Camelopardalis and stretches across about 62 light-years of space, but not much else is known about it.
06vela-a
A network of dark, dense clouds of dust and gas sprawls across the constellation Vela. The complex is called the Vela Molecular Cloud Ridge, and may form part of the edge of the Orion spiral arm spur in the Milky Way galaxy. This image captures just one of four distinct regions of dense gas, dubbed Vela A. Vela A is about 3,300 light-years away. This image spans about 130 light-years in space. Sprinkled around Vela A are a few groups of sources that appear very red in this image, and have no known counterparts in visible-light images of the region. These may be young stellar objects (YSOs), which are stars in their infancy enveloped in dust. The infrared light seen from these baby stars does not come directly from the stars, but rather from the warm, glowing dust around them.
07pleiades
The famous Pleiades constellation gets a new look in the infrared. When the watercolor-like cloud surrounding the open cluster of stars was first observed, it was thought to be leftover material from the formation of the cluster. But later studies found the cluster to be about 100 million years old -- any dust left over from its formation would have dissipated long ago. The cluster is probably just passing through the cloud seen here, heating it up and making it glow. At a distance of about 436 light-years from Earth, the Pleiades is one of the closest star clusters and plays an important role in determining distances to astronomical bodies further away.
08tychos-supernova-remnant
The red circle in the upper left part of this image is SN 1572, often called "Tycho’s Supernova" for Renaissance astronomer Tycho Brahe. When the supernova first appeared in November 1572, it was as bright as Venus and could be seen in the daytime. The center of this image features a star-forming nebula called S175 about 3,500 light-years away and 35 light-years across. Most of the red dots in the lower right of the image have no counterparts in visible light images, and only some have been cataloged by previous infrared surveys. They could also be young stellar objects, infant stars surrounded by glowing red dust.
09andromeda
In one of its very first images, WISE got the dirt on our neighbor galaxy Andromeda. This image highlights the dust that traces the galaxy's spiral arms. The hot dust, which is being heated by newborn stars, traces the spidery arms all the way to the center of the galaxy. Signs of young stars can also be seen in the centers of Andromeda's smaller companion galaxies, M32 and M110. This image shows only the longest-wavelength infrared light that WISE was sensitive to, so this is exactly the sort of image we will see no more of. 12-micron light is shown in orange, and 22-micron light is shown in red.
10wise-firstlight
This is WISE's baby photo, the [very first image ever released](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/new-sky-mapping-infrared-telescope-sees-first-light/) by the telescope team. It captures a region of about 3,000 stars in the constellation Carina. There's still more to look forward to, though. The WISE team has been releasing images in a trickle, but the full data set will begin flowing to the public April 2011, with a final data release slated for March 2012. "You will be able to get these data from your very own homes," Mainzer said.
