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Thus, over a period of five years -- 1989 to 1994 -- the two major space agencies had rejected a total of four major proposals for large radiatively cooled telescopes operating at infrared/sub-millimeter wavelengths. Nonetheless, the paradigm had shifted. For the first time large infrared telescopes seemed possible and the L2 Lagrangian point became the preferred location for missions of all kinds. Although proposals for a large-aperture radiatively-cooled infrared telescope would never win either an ESA or a NASA competition, "conventional wisdom" had moved on from cryogenic cooling. In 1996, the Dressler Committee’s "HST & Beyond" identified Edison and High-Z...

Scientists using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope say they have detected light that may be from the earliest objects in the universe. If confirmed, the observation provides a glimpse of an era more than 13 billion years ago when, after the fading embers of the theorized Big Bang gave way to millions of years of pervasive darkness, the universe came alive. This light could be from the very first stars or perhaps from hot gas falling into the first black holes. The science team, based at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., describes the observation as seeing the...

A new analysis of 'cool' spots in the cosmic microwave background may cast new doubts on a key piece of evidence supporting the big bang theory of how the universe was formed. Two scientists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) looked for but couldn't find evidence of gravitational "lensing" where you might expect to find it, in the most distant light source in the universe -- the cosmic microwave background. Results of this research by Dr. Richard Lieu, a UAH physics professor, and Dr. Jonathan Mittaz, a UAH research associate, were published Monday in the "Astrophysical Journal." In...

Two of the most common materials found in Tempel 1 are an iron-silicon mineral called ferrosilite and a glassy form of a magnesium-iron mineral called olivine, which make up 33% and 17% of the comet, respectively, according to observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope. However, these minerals are entirely absent from the Wild 2 samples analysed so far... It is not clear how to explain this difference, says Stardust mission leader Donald Brownlee of the University of Washington in Seattle, US. But he says one possibility is that the material on Tempel 1 was chemically modified by ancient collisions --...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 December 26 Young Star, Dark Cloud Credit: A. Noriega-Crespo (SSC/Caltech) et al., JPL, Caltech, NASA (Inset: Digital Sky Survey) Explanation: High-speed outflows of molecular gas from a young stellar object glow in infrared light, revealing themselves in this recent false-color image from the Spitzer Space Telescope. Cataloged as HH (Herbig-Haro) 46/47 the infrared source is lodged within a dark nebula or Bok globule - near the lower...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2004 April 14 Massive Star Forming Region DR21 in Infrared Credit: A. Marston (ESTEC/ESA) et al., JPL, Caltech, NASA Explanation: Deep in the normally hidden recesses of giant molecular cloud DR21, a stellar nursery has been found creating some of the most massive stars yet recorded. The orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope's Infrared Array Camera opened the window into the cloud last year in mid- infrared light. The cloud...

Astronomers who think they know how the very early universe came to have so much interstellar dust need to think again, according to new results from the Spitzer Space Telescope. In the last few years, observers have discovered huge quantities of interstellar dust near the most distant quasars in the very young universe, only 700 million years after the cosmos was born in the Big Bang. "And that becomes a big question," said Oliver Krause of the University of Arizona Steward Observatory in Tucson and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg. "How could all of this dust have...

NASA Spitzer Space Telescope Provides Visual Feast Online The magic of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope comes alive in an online interactive presentation, available now at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/stars_galaxies/, http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/spitzer-2005 or http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/starsgalaxies/index.html. The show-and-tell feature highlights colorful images of galaxies, nebulas and other celestial wonders, all captured during the mission's first year-and-a-half in space. The images, coupled with artists' concepts, text and interviews with scientists, illustrate how Spitzer's powerful infrared eyes are dramatically enhancing our knowledge of the universe. Infrared is particularly effective for penetrating thick, murky regions of space and revealing what lies beyond. Recent Spitzer discoveries include details about the chaotic...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - NASA scientists used an infrared telescope to see past stardust and spot hidden galaxies more than 11 billion light-years from the Earth, according to a journal article published Tuesday. Scientists used the Spitzer Space Telescope to find the galaxies, the most luminous in the universe. The galaxies shine with light equivalent to 10 trillion suns but were too far away and too drenched in cosmic dust to be seen - until now. "We are seeing galaxies that are essentially invisible," said Professor Dan Weedman of Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y. Weedman co-authored an article detailing the...

A new window to the universe has opened with today's release of the first dazzling images from NASA's newly named Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly known as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility. The first observations, of a glowing stellar nursery; a swirling, dusty galaxy; a disc of planet-forming debris; and organic material in the distant universe, demonstrate the power of the telescope's infrared detectors to capture cosmic features never before seen. The Spitzer Space Telescope was also officially named today after the late Dr. Lyman Spitzer, Jr. He was one of the 20th century's most influential scientists, and in the mid-1940s,...

LOS ANGELES - The Spitzer telescope's examination of hundreds of stars has found evidence that the times it takes to form an Earth-sized planet may last hundreds instead of tens of millions of years. The telescope revealed dust rings around nearby stars that couldn't have survived long unless violent collisions between gigantic chunks of rock were replenishing them, scientists said during a press conference Monday at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Scientists have long believed that planets are formed when the dust in a disc-like formation around a young star begins to clump. Some of the clumps eventually grow...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Planet-building is dusty work, and now two space telescopes have captured images of cosmic construction materials: disks of dust circling stars about the same size as our sun. Pictures released on Thursday from NASA (news - web sites)'s Hubble and Spitzer telescopes give the clearest look yet at the early and late phases of the planetary construction process. Most astronomers believe planets are created from the disks of dust and gas that form around young stars, and the younger the star, the bigger the dusty disk. Big gas giant planets like Jupiter form first, then smaller rocky...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted a dusty disc of material around a very small "failed star" called a brown dwarf, raising the possibility that there may be miniature solar systems in which planets orbit objects not much larger than planets, scientists said Monday. The brown dwarf named OTS 44 is only about 15 times the mass of Jupiter, much smaller than any other brown dwarf known to be surrounded by a disc of planet-building material, said Kevin Luhman, lead author of a study by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "The neat thing...

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - A NASA telescope has spotted galaxies that hold the ingredients for life dating back to when the universe was very young. Using the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists at the California Institute of Technology detected organic molecules in galaxies when the universe was a quarter of its current age of 14 billion years old, NASA said Thursday. These complex molecules, composed of carbon and hydrogen, are commonly found on Earth and are thought to be responsible for planet and star formation. Spitzer scientists found the organic building blocks in galaxies where intense star formation took place...

PASADENA, Calif. - A NASA telescope has detected for the first time the building blocks of planets around brown dwarfs, suggesting that such failed stars probably undergo the same planet-building process. Until now, the microscopic crystal building blocks that eventually collide to form planets have only been seen around stars and comets - considered the remnants of the solar system. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope recently spotted the tiny crystals and dust grains circling five brown dwarfs located 520 light years away in the Chamaeleon constellation. The crystals, composed of a green mineral commonly found on Earth known as olivine, are...

Astronomers have found a debris disk around a sun-like star that may be forming or has formed its terrestrial planets. The disk -- a probable analog to our asteroid belt -- may have begun a solar-system-scale demolition derby, where the rocky remains of failed planets collide chaotically. "This is one of a very rare class of objects that may give us a glimpse into what our solar system may have looked like during the formation of our terrestrial planets," said Dean C. Hines of the Space Science Institute, a leader of the team that discovered the rare objects with NASA's...

Partial Ingredients For DNA And Protein Found Around Star NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered some of life's most basic ingredients in the dust swirling around a young star. The ingredients - gaseous precursors to DNA and protein - were detected in the star's terrestrial planet zone, a region where rocky planets such as Earth are thought to be born. The findings represent the first time that these gases, called acetylene and hydrogen cyanide, have been found in a terrestrial planet zone outside of our own. "This infant system might look a lot like ours did billions of years ago,...

PASADENA – The Spitzer Space Telescope has detected evidence of two mega solar systems – giant stars enveloped by what appear to be huge disks of planet-forming dust, scientists reported Wednesday. The appearance of cloudy disks around stars are believed to represent current or future planetary systems. Our sun is surrounded by the Kuiper Belt, a disk containing dust, comets and other bodies. Astronomers say the latest findings were surprising because such massive stars are thought to be inhospitable to the formation of planets. “Our data suggest that the planet-forming process may be hardier than previously believed, occurring around even...

For Release: April 5, 2006 NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has uncovered new evidence that planets might rise up out of a dead star's ashes. The infrared telescope surveyed the scene around a pulsar, the remnant of an exploded star, and found a surrounding disk made up of debris shot out during the star's death throes. The dusty rubble in this disk might ultimately stick together to form planets. This is the first time scientists have detected planet-building materials around a star that died in a fiery blast. "We're amazed that the planet-formation process seems to be so universal," said Dr....

Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have found evidence that dusty disks of planet-forming material tug on and slow down the young, whirling stars they surround. Young stars are full of energy, spinning around like tops in half a day or less. They would spin even faster, but something puts on the brakes. While scientists had theorized that planet-forming disks might be at least part of the answer, demonstrating this had been hard to do until now... Stars begin life as collapsing balls of gas that spin faster and faster as they shrink, like twirling ice skaters pulling in their...