The Spitzer Space Telescope is an infrared telescope launched by NASA’s Great Observatories program. It is named after Dr. Lyman Spitzer, Jr. and is known for capturing images of the Andromeda Galaxy and young stellar objects. Its images are free to the public.
The Spitzer Space Telescope is an infrared space telescope, the latest of four space telescopes to be launched for NASA’s Great Observatories program. The three previous telescopes launched under this program were the Hubble Space Telescope (in 1990), the Chandra X-ray Observatory (in 1991), the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (in 1999). Everyone specializes in one portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The Spitzer Space Telescope is named after Dr. Lyman Spitzer, Jr., who originated the idea of space telescopes in the mid-1940s. The naming was unique in having derived from a competition open to the general public rather than a council of distinguished astronomers. Lyman Spitzer died in 1997, so he was never able to see the telescope named after him launch into space.
Infrared light is light produced by heat. It is slightly less energetic than the visual portion of the spectrum, with a slightly longer wavelength, in the micrometre range. Each star emits large amounts of infrared radiation, allowing the Spitzer Space Telescope to observe everything an optical telescope can, and a little more.
Because infrared light is invisible to humans and doesn’t match any colors we’re familiar with, the images returned by Spitzer are given a false coloration so they can be interpreted by scientists. Spitzer is particularly famous for his impressive shots of the Andromeda Galaxy, just two million light years from Earth, the closest galaxy to the Milky Way.
Spitzer is also notable for being the first telescope to capture real light from an exoplanet, which it did in 2005, but didn’t resolve it into an actual image. In 2004, Spitzer observed a faint star that is considered by many scientists to be the youngest ever imaged. One of Spitzer’s main tasks is to observe YSOs (young stellar objects) and the so-called stellar nurseries.
The Spitzer Space Telescope images are free to the public and for journalistic purposes and have been published in the prestigious journal Nature, among many others.
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