Two massive, bubbling clouds of star-making factories were captured in a stunning photo by a NASA space telescope that is surveying the whole sky in infrared light. The huge mosaic of the Heart and Soul nebulae was taken by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer space telescope, which has finished approximately three-fourths of its infrared survey of the entire sky. A NASA advisory panel recently suggested that the telescope's mission end in October as planned, instead of extending its imaging work.
WISE was designed to detect the faint glow of distant objects with instruments chilled to the point where they make no detectable infrared light. Currently, WISE is producing approximately 7,500 images a day in each of four infrared wavelengths. "This new image demonstrates the power of WISE to capture vast regions," said Ned Wright, the mission's principal investigator at UCLA, who presented the new picture today at the 216th conference of the American Astronomical Society in Miami. "We're looking north, south, east and west to map the entire sky."
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