The light from most of the stars and other objects like planets in this universe is twice as invisible. It may come but in the form of infrared and heat radiation, with the wavelengths too long for our eyes to pick up. Moreover, most infrared wavelengths do not penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere to get to our unseeing eyes.
So to take a proper inventory of space mischief, astronomers have had to take to space. On Friday, they will get a little more help when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is scheduled to launch the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base – California as early as 9:09 a.m., Standard Eastern time.
Circling the Earth in a polar orbit with 300 miles height, the spacecraft, equipped with a 16-inch telescope and infrared detectors, will take photographs of the entire sky every six months.
WISE is a descendant to the Infrared Astronomy Satellite, or IRAS, which was launched in 1983 and made the first heat maps of the sky. And it is a trailblazer for the giant James Webb Space Telescope due in 2014.
But IRAS had 62 pixels in its camera, WISE has 4 million. As a result, WISE will be hundreds of times as sensitive as its predecessor and able to survey a greatly larger volume of space.
