The colossal gallery – available to anyone with a connection to the web - was taken by Nasa’s super hi-tech sky-mapping telescope.
It took a staggering two and a half million pictures of the universe, which include 33,000 new asteroids found floating between Mars and Jupiter – and 20 comets.
Heavens above: This WISE image shows the Berkeley 59 cluster of stars, which are relative babies at just a few million years old, and resemble a cosmic rose
Since 2009 the £200million infrared telescope, called the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has been scanning the cosmos with the most sophisticated cameras ever deployed in space.
More...
- The Milky Way as you've never seen it before: Incredible 360-degree panorama reveals the majesty of our galaxy
- Cosmic blast in distant galaxy that has so far lasted for 11 DAYS puzzles scientists
- Discovered: Biggest ever black hole that is so big it could swallow our ENTIRE solar system
- Largest planet in the solar system could be about to be discovered - and it's up to four times the size of Jupiter
Among the eye-opening images released by Nasa is one of the Comet Siding Spring, seen streaking across the sky with a ghostly trail and the gigantic Andromeda galaxy, which lies 2.5million light-years from Earth. WISE also snapped the stunning rose-shaped Berkeley 59 cluster of young stars, burning away in their stellar nursery.
Cosmic steaker: The Comet Siding Spring and its ghostly tail was picked up by WISE's beady eyes
Way to glow: The immense Andromeda galaxy can be seen with a pair of binoculars, but you'll need a £200million telescope to produce a picture like this
‘The spectacular new data just released remind us that we have many new neighbours,’ said Pete Schultz, a space scientist at Brown University.
So far, Nasa has released just half of the images that WISE took and plans to upload many more in the near future.
WISE ran out of coolant in October, making it unable to chill its heat-sensitive instruments and observe faraway objects. So instead it has taken up sentry duties and will spend the next four months peering into the space around Earth for potentially threatening asteroids and comets.
To see the images, log on to www.nasa.gov/wise.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1377762/Nasa-posts-thousands-amazing-space-images-internet.html#ixzz1JpYsSVjM
No comments:
Post a Comment