Galaxy quest: First stunning images from telescope scanning our entire night sky



A wispy comet, a star-forming cloud and the grand Andromeda galaxy are the first cosmic characters to be unveiled by Nasa's latest hi-tech space telescope.

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), which was launched into orbit in December 2009, is scanning the entire sky in infrared light.

The satellite has already beamed back more than a quarter of a million raw, infrared images. These first processed pictures show a sample of the mission's targets from individual comets and asteroids to huge galaxies.

This infrared WISE image shows a star-forming cloud 20,000 light years away that is teeming with gas, dust and massive newborn stars. The inset reveals the centre of the cloud, a cluster of stars called NGC 3603

'WISE has worked superbly,' said Nasa's Ed Weiler.

'These first images are proving the spacecraft's secondary mission of helping to track asteroids, comets and other stellar objects will be just as critically important as its primary mission of surveying the entire sky in infrared.'

One image shows a bright and choppy star-forming region called NGC 3603, lying 20,000 light-years away in the Carina spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. This star-forming factory is churning out batches of new stars, some of which are monstrously massive and hotter than the sun. The hot stars warm the surrounding dust clouds, causing them to glow at infrared wavelengths.



WISE will see hundreds of similar star-making regions in our galaxy, helping astronomers piece together a picture of how stars are born.

The immense Andromeda galaxy, also known as M31 is the Milky Way's neighbour. The mosaic covers an area equivalent to more than 100 full moons

The observations also provide an important link to understanding violent episodes of star formation in distant galaxies. Because NGC 3603 is much closer, astronomers use it as a lab to probe the same type of action that is taking place billions of light-years away.

Another image shows the beauty of a comet called Siding Spring. As the comet parades toward the sun, it sheds dust that glows in infrared light visible to WISE. The comet's tail, which stretches about 10 million miles, looks like a streak of red paint. A bright star appears below it in blue.



'We've got a candy store of images coming down from space,' said Edward Wright of UCLA, the principal investigator for WISE.



'Everyone has their favorite flavours, and we've got them all.'

During its survey, the mission is expected to find perhaps dozens of comets, including some that ride along in orbits that take them somewhat close to Earth's path around the sun. WISE will help unravel clues locked inside comets about how our solar system came to be.

Traveling farther out from our Milky Way, the third new image shows our nearest large neighbor, the Andromeda spiral galaxy. Andromeda is a bit bigger than our Milky Way and about 2.5 million light-years away.

Visitor from deep space: Comet Siding Spring was discovered in 2007. The mass of ice and dust spent billions of years orbiting in a spherical cloud of comets surrounding our solar system, before it was knocked onto a course nearer the Sun

The new picture highlights WISE's wide field of view - it covers an area larger than 100 full moons and even shows other smaller galaxies near Andromeda, all belonging to our "local group" of more than about 50 galaxies. WISE will capture the entire local group.



The fourth WISE picture is even farther out, in a region of hundreds of galaxies all bound together into one family. Called the Fornax cluster, these galaxies are 60 million light-years from Earth.

The mission's infrared views reveal both stagnant and active galaxies, providing a census of data on an entire galactic community.

A dense cluster of galaxies captured by WISE. The cluster, called Fornax because of its location in a constellation of the same name, is 60 million light-years from Earth, and is one of the closest galaxy clusters to the Milky Way

'All these pictures tell a story about our dusty origins and destiny,' said WISE project scientist Peter Eisenhardt.

'WISE sees dusty comets and rocky asteroids tracing the formation and evolution of our solar system. We can map thousands of forming and dying solar systems across our entire galaxy.



'We can see patterns of star formation across other galaxies, and waves of star-bursting galaxies in clusters millions of light years away.'

Other mission targets include comets, asteroids and cool stars called brown dwarfs. WISE discovered its first near-Earth asteroid on January 12 and first comet on January 22.

Since objects around room temperature emit infrared radiation, the WISE telescope and detectors are kept very cold at -257C.