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Spitzer Space Telescope
hideThe Spitzer Space Telescope (formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, SIRTF) is an infrared space observatory launched in 2003. It is the fourth and final of NASA's Great Observatories.
The planned nominal mission period was to be 2.5 years with a pre-launch expectation that the mission could extend to five or slightly more years until the onboard liquid helium supply was exhausted. This occurred on 15 May 2009 . The two shortest wavelength modules of the IRAC camera are still operable in a "warm" (ca. 30K) telescope so surveys will continue at reduced sensitivity in these wavebands only in the Spitzer Warm Mission.
In keeping with NASA tradition, the telescope was renamed after successful demonstration of operation, on December 18, 2003. Unlike most telescopes which are named after famous deceased astronomers by a board of scientists, the name for SIRTF was obtained from a contest open to the general public.
The result was it being named in honor of Lyman Spitzer, one of the 20th century's great scientists. Though he was not the first to propose the idea of the space telescope (Hermann Oberth being the first, in Wege zur Raumschiffahrt, 1929, and also in Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen, 1923), Spitzer has been cited for his pioneering contributions to rocketry and astronomy, as well as "his vision and leadership in articulating the advantages and benefits to be realized from the Space Telescope Program."
The US$800 million Spitzer was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, on a Delta II 7920H ELV rocket, Monday, 25 August 2003 at 13:35:39 UTC-5 (EDT). It follows a rather unusual orbit, heliocentric instead of geocentric, trailing and drifting away from Earth's orbit at approximately 0.1 astronomical unit per year (a so-called "earth-trailing" orbit). The primary mirror is 85 cm in diameter, f/12 and made of beryllium and was cooled to 5.5 K. The satellite contains three instruments that allowed it to perform imaging and photometry from 3 to 180 micrometers, spectroscopy from 5 to 40 micrometers, and spectrophotometry from 5 to 100 micrometers.
For more information about Spitzer Space Telescope, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
News tagged with spitzer space telescope
Largest Ring Around Saturn Discovered
Oct 07, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered an enormous ring around Saturn -- by far the largest of the giant planet's many rings.
The Energy Sources of Ultraluminous Galaxies
Nov 27, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Ultraluminous infrared galaxies ((ULIRGs) are galaxies whose luminosity exceeds that of a trillion suns; for comparison, the Milky Way galaxy has a typical (and much more modest) luminosity ...
New planet discoveries suggest low-mass planets are common around nearby stars (w/ Video)
Dec 14, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- An international team of planet hunters has discovered as many as six low-mass planets around two nearby Sun-like stars, including two "super-Earths" with masses 5 and 7.5 times the mass of ...
Resolving a galactic mystery
Apr 29, 2009 |
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An extremely deep Chandra X-ray Observatory image of a region near the center of our Galaxy has resolved a long-standing mystery about an X-ray glow along the plane of the Galaxy. The glow in the region covered ...
NASA's Spitzer Images Out-of-This-World Galaxy
Jul 23, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has imaged a wild creature of the dark -- a coiled galaxy with an eye-like object at its center.
Why Are Galaxies So Smooth?
May 01, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers has discovered streams of young stars flowing from their natal cocoons in distant galaxies. These distant rivers ...
Planet Smash-Up Sends Vaporized Rock, Hot Lava Flying (w/ Video)
Aug 10, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found evidence of a high-speed collision between two burgeoning planets around a young star.
Solar systems around dead Suns?
Apr 20, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers have found that at least 1 in 100 white dwarf stars show evidence of orbiting asteroids and rocky planets, suggesting ...
Cool Stars Have Different Mix of Life-Forming Chemicals
Apr 07, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Life on Earth is thought to have arisen from a hot soup of chemicals. Does this same soup exist on planets around other stars? A new study from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope hints that planets ...
Spitzer Telescope Observes Baby Brown Dwarf
Nov 23, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has contributed to the discovery of the youngest brown dwarf ever observed -- a finding that, if confirmed, may solve an astronomical mystery about how these ...
The Hot Saturn Exoplanet
Oct 02, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Of the roughly 350 known exoplanets (i.e., extrasolar planets), the one orbiting the star HD149026 is unique.
Seeing the Cosmos Through 'Warm' Infrared Eyes
Aug 05, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has taken its first shots of the cosmos since warming up and starting its second career. The infrared telescope ran out of coolant on May 15, 2009, more than ...
Galaxy cluster smashes distance record
Oct 22, 2009 |
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The most distant galaxy cluster yet has been discovered by combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical and infrared telescopes. The cluster is located about 10.2 billion light years away, ...
Astronomers get a sizzling weather report from a distant planet
Jan 28, 2009 |
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Astronomers have observed the intense heating of a distant planet as it swung close to its parent star, providing important clues to the atmospheric properties of the planet. The observations enabled astronomers ...
Dead Stars Tell Story of Planet Birth
Jan 05, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have turned to an unexpected place to study the evolution of planets -- dead stars. Observations made with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveal six dead "white dwarf" stars littered ...
