February 1, 2011 - Pasadena, California, USA.
NEOWISE The mission of NASA has completed its review of small bodies, asteroids and comets in our Solar System. The discoveries of previously unknown objects include a 20 comets, more than 33,000 asteroids in the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter, and 134 objects passing close to Earth or NEOs. NEOs are asteroids and comets with trajectories that pass less than 45 million miles from Earth in its annual path around the Sun
NEOWISE program is an extension of the Wide Field Infrared Explorer, or WISE, a mission that was launched in December 2009. WISE scanned the entire sky in infrared light about 1.5 times. Captured more than 2.7 million images of various objects in space, ranging from distant galaxies to nearby asteroids and comets to Earth.
In October 2010, after completing his first mission ceased operation coolant instrumentation maintaining adequate working conditions. However, two of its four infrared cameras remained operational. Thus, these two channels were still useful for hunting asteroids, so the decision to extend NASA was part of the WISE mission NEOWISE for four months, with the primary purpose was to search for more asteroids and comets, and finishing with a complete scan of the main asteroid belt.
"In just one year of observations NEOWISE project has significantly enhanced our catalog of data on NEOs and other small bodies of the solar system," said Lindley Johnson, program executive for NASA's NEO Observation Program.
NEOWISE Now that is over successfully complete a sweep of the Main Belt, the WISE spacecraft will enter hibernate mode and remains in polar orbit around the Earth, which could be called back into service in the near future.
addition to discovering new asteroids and comets, NEOWISE also confirmed the presence of objects in the Main Belt that had already been detected. In just one year, said about 153,000 foreign rocky bodies known about 500,000 objects. Those include the 33,000 who NEOWISE discovered.
NEOWISE also observed familiar objects that are closer and more distant to us that the Belt Principal, including 2,000 asteroids orbiting Jupiter along with a hundred more than 100 NEOs and comets.
These observations are essential to determine the sizes and compositions of these objects. Visible Light The data reveal just how much sunlight is reflected by an asteroid, while the infrared data are more directly related to the size of the object. Combining the visible and infrared measurements, astronomers can learn about the compositions of the rocky bodies. For example, if they are solid or crumbly. The results lead to a much improved picture of the various asteroid populations.
Data of NEOWISE obtained on the orbits of asteroids and comets are cataloged in the Central Minor Planet International Astronomical Union. The science team is now analyzing the infrared observations and publish new results in the coming months.
When they are combined with observations of WISE NEOWISE data will help in the discovery of very faint stars nearby, called "brown dwarfs." These observations have the potential to reveal a "brown dwarf" even closer to us than our known star Proxima Centauri, if any such object. Also, if there is a gas giant planet in the most hidden outside our Solar System, WISE data and NEOWISE could detect.
The first scientific results from observations of the WISE mission will be available to the astronomical community and public in April.
More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise, http://wise.astro.ucla.edu and http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wise.
0 comments:
Post a Comment