This composite graphic encompasses a quarter century of infrared astronomy from space, a world away from Galileo Galilei's eight-power telescope that was the cutting edge of astronomy 400 years ago. The composite recognizes the International Year of Astronomy and celebrates the dramatic progress in our understanding of the universe derived from infrared observations. It also illustrates some of the contributions from the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) to this progress by way of astronomical data processing, analysis, archiving and dissemination. Infrared astronomy, especiall
This composite graphic encompasses a quarter century of infrared astronomy from space, a world away from Galileo Galilei's eight-power telescope that was the cutting edge of astronomy 400 years ago. The composite recognizes the International Year of Astronomy and celebrates the dramatic progress in our understanding of the universe derived from infrared observations. It also illustrates some of the contributions from the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) to this progress by way of astronomical data processing, analysis, archiving and dissemination. Infrared astronomy, especially from space, explores up a vast portion of the spectrum beyond the red end of visible light. Through this window the universe emits a tremendous variety of information about the physical and chemical composition of various regions, about their energetic states, and about the current and historical activity of star formation. Infrared and submillimeter wavelengths still hold the most promise for studying the earliest moments in the history of the universe when diffuse gas was transformed into the first stars and galaxies. This era is thought to have occurred around the first percent of the age of the universe. While celebrating this rich legacy of infrared astronomy, infrared astronomers are also enjoying a golden age of sorts, with an unprecedented number of missions currently in-flight: NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope is continuing its warm mission; the European Space Agency Herschel and Planck telescopes are in their prime mission phase; NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) just launched and is expected to start mapping the sky in early 2010. All of these missions have links to IPAC. "Rho Ophiuchi" is a complex region of star formation centered on a large cloud of molecular gas, and located about 400 light-years from Earth. Hundreds of young stars are forming out of the central cloud. Their typical age is 300,000 years, seen in the first "moments" of the billi
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Photo credit: © NASA Image Collection / Alamy / Afripics
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Keywords: astronomy, copy, editorial, nasa, news, night, oph, ophiuchi, photograph, photography, rho, rocket, sky, space, stock
