This image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) features comet 65P/Gunn, taken on April 24, 2010 (just one month after its closest approach to the Sun) in the constellation Capricornus. This comet is what is called a short-period, Jupiter family comet. It orbits the Sun inside the main asteroid belt between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter, taking 6.79 years to complete one trip around the Sun. Just ahead of the comet is an interesting fuzzy red feature that makes it look something like a swordfish, or narwhal. This "sword" is made of dust particles that have previously been shed by 65P/Gunn as it orbits the Sun. These debris trails represent the first stages in the evolution of meteoroid streams. Over time, the material in the debris trail can drift away from the comet's orbit and become clouds of debris that will be seen as a meteor shower if Earth passes through it.
An artist's rendition of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The space telescope will survey the entire sky in a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum called the mid-infrared, with far greater sensitivity than any previous mission or program. Hundreds of millions of astronomical objects will be catalogued, providing a vast storehouse of knowledge about the solar system, the Milky Way, and the universe.
This image highlights the dust that speckles the spiral arms of Andromeda (also called M31), the nearest large neighbor to our Milky Way galaxy, just 2.5 million light-years away. The image shows light seen by the longest-wavelength infrared detectors on WISE — 12-micron light (color coded orange) and 22-micron light (red). Dust heated by newborn stars traces the spidery arms all the way to the center of the galaxy. Telltale signs of young stars can also be seen in the centers of Andromeda's smaller companion galaxies, M32 and M110.
This image highlights the Andromeda galaxy's older stellar population in blue. It was taken by the shortest-wavelength camera on WISE, which detects infrared light of 3.4 microns. A pronounced warp in the disk of the galaxy — the aftermath of a collision with another galaxy — can be clearly seen in the spiral arm to the upper left side of the galaxy.
WISE's large field of view and multi-wavelength infrared sight allowed it to form this complete view of the Fornax Cluster, containing dozens of bright galaxies and hundreds of smaller ones. Old stars show up at the shorter infrared wavelengths, color coded blue. Dust heated by new generations of stars lights up at longer infrared wavelengths, colored red here.
The center of the cluster is dominated by the galaxy known as NGC 1399, a large spheroidal galaxy whose light is almost exclusively from old stars and thus appears blue. The most spectacular member of Fornax is the galaxy known as NGC 1365, a giant barred spiral galaxy, located in the lower right.
A mosaic of images from WISE spanning a range of the sky about 5 times the size of the full Moon shows the open star cluster NGC 7380, located in the constellation Cepheus (about 7,000 light-years from Earth). The star cluster is embedded in a nebula, sometimes called the Wizard Nebula, which spans some 110 light-years. The stars of NGC 7380 have emerged from this star forming region in the last 5 million years or so, making it a relatively young cluster.
This image from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is of the nearby galaxy Messier 83, or M83 for short. It is a spiral galaxy approximately 15 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra and is sometimes referred to as the southern Pinwheel galaxy. At about 55,500 light-years across it is a bit more than half the size of the Milky Way Galaxy, but with a similar overall structure. This image was made from observations by all four infrared detectors aboard WISE. Blue and cyan represent infrared light at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is primarily light from stars. Green and red represent light at 12 and 22 microns, which is primarily emission from warm dust.
The Tarantula Nebula, located in the southern constellation of Dorado, is a giant star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, an irregular dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. It is relatively close, in galactic terms, at about 160,000 light-years. Its motion around the Milky Way causes compression of interstellar dust and gas at is leading edge. This has led to the huge burst of star formation, creating the Tarantula Nebula.
This image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) takes in several interesting objects in the constellation Cassiopeia, none of which are easily seen in visible light. The red circle visible in the upper left part of the image is SN 1572, often called "Tycho's Supernova." Named after astronomer Tycho Brahe, this is the remnant of a star explosion that first appeared in November 1572. It was as bright as Venus and could be seen in the daytime, before slowly dimming. It wasn't until the 1950s that the remnants of the supernova could be seen again with the help of telescopes. In the center of the image is a star-forming nebula of dust and gas, called S175 (in the Sharpless catalog of ionized nebula). This cloud of material is about 3,500 light years away and 35 light-years across. On the left edge of the image, between the Tycho supernova remnant and the very bright star, is an open cluster of stars, King 1, first catalogued by Ivan King, an astronomer at UC Berkeley. This cluster is about 6,000 light-years away, 4 light-years across and is about 2 billion years old. Also of interest in the lower right of the image is a cluster of very red sources. Almost all of these sources have no counterparts in visible light images, and only some have been catalogued by previous infrared surveys. There are indications that they may be young stellar objects associated with a dense nebula in the area. Young stellar objects (YSOs) are stars in their earliest stages of life.