- WASHINGTON (AP) -- NASA unveiled
the first views from its space infrared telescope, a super-cooled orbiting
observatory that can look through obscuring dust to capture images never
before seen, and also named it the Spitzer Space Telescope in honor of
a famed astronomer.
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- The new telescope, a $US670 million project launched
last August, is able to detect extremely faint waves of infrared radiation,
or heat, allowing astronomers to peer for the first time into the heart
of stellar fields that had been blocked from the view of conventional telescopes
by dense clouds of dust and gas.
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- "This gives us a powerful new capability that will
enable us to see things not seen before and to answer questions we couldn't
even ask before. This is a very powerful new tool for astronomy,"
Michael Werner, an astrophysicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
California, and the project scientist for the Spitzer, said.
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- "We are now able for the first time to lift the
cosmic veil that has blocked out view and see the universe in all of its
components," said Giovanni Fazio, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics and a Spitzer researcher.
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- NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe announced the new telescope
was named by Lyman Spitzer Jr., a Princeton University astronomer who proposed
in 1946, long before the first orbital rocket, that the nation put telescopes
into space, above the obscuring effects of the atmosphere. Spitzer was
a leader in efforts to persuade Congress to pay for a fleet of orbiting
telescopes and he is played a major role in the 1990 launch of the Hubble
Space Telescope.
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- Among the first views from the Spitzer:
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- -A galaxy that was mostly blurred in the view of other
telescopes. In the Spitzer image, there are vast fields of stars in a spiral
necklace surrounding the galaxy. The image also detects clouds of glowing
carbon dust.
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- -A patch of sky that appears black and empty in visible
light telescopes is revealed by the Spitzer to be a stellar nursery, a
large cloud of dust wherein stars and other bodies are forming,
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- "That's what the solar system looked like in the
beginning," said Fazio.
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- -An object 3.25 billion light years away that is almost
invisible to other instruments is seen as a highly energetic galaxy, glowing
with an energy 1000 times that of the Milky Way, the home galaxy of the
sun and Earth. Embedded within the clouds of the galaxy are organic molecules,
such as carbon dioxide and cyanide, that are thought to be the chemical
building blocks of life.
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- -A comet streaking through the solar system some 880,000
million kilometres from the sun. It is surrounded by a cloud about 20 times
bigger than Jupiter, but the Spitzer sees to the comets glowing core.
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- John N. Bahcall of the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, New Jersey said the Spitzer will enable astronomers to study
the birth pangs of stars and the formation of planets out to the very edge
of the universe.
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- "We will be able to see things that human beings
have never before seen," he said. "This will change the way astronomers
do astronomy."
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- The widow, children and grandchildren of Lyman Spitzer,
new telescope's namesake, were present at a news conference where the name
of the orbiting observatory was announced.
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- Spitzer is considered one of the most significant astronomers
of the 20th century, the author of textbooks still studied in college.
He did fundamental studies of the interstellar medium, the gas and dust
that fill vast reaches of space and which play a key role in the formation
of stars and planets. Spitzer died in 1997 at the age of 83.
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- The new telescope completes NASA's original plan to orbit
telescopes to study segments of the electromagnetic spectrum, the visible
and invisible radiation that fills the universe, which are partially or
completely blocked by the Earth's atmosphere.
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- The Hubble, launched in 1990, gathers images in visible,
ultraviolet and near-infrared waves. The Compton, launched in 1991, studied
gamma rays, a high energy form of radiation. Its mission ended in 1999.
The Chandra Observatory, launched in 1999, studies X-ray radiation from
supernovas and black holes.
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- Now the Spitzer collects infrared radiation which is
invisible to the naked eye, but which is able to penetrate dust and gas.
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- Virtually all objects in the universe emit some infrared,
or heat, radiation. To detect it, the Spitzer is rather like a telescope
within a vacuum jug. All the instruments detecting infrared are cooled
by liquid helium and shielded from the heat-producing parts of the craft.
The telescope was launched into an orbit that trails the Earth. This keeps
it away from the planet's heat and enables the Spitzer to operate at a
minus-450 degrees F, just 10 degrees above absolute zero.
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- The store of liquid helium, used at its present rate,
is expected to last almost six years, officials said.
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- Copyright 2003 News Limited.
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- http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8210502%255E1702,00.html
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