Spitzer

Spitzer launched into space on August 25th, 2003 and has now completed its mission. Its primary destination was a heliocentric orbit, which it arrived at on December 18th, 2003 . Wherever Spitzer goes, it carries its trusty infrared camera, infrared spectrograph, and photometer. Spitzer often chats with humans from NASA / JPL and Caltech.

The Spitzer Space Telescope is a space probe that has seen what our Milky Way galaxy looks like for the first time by peering past all the cosmic dust that normally blocks our view. The Spitzer Space Telescope utilizes infrared technology to gain insights and produce stunning views of not only our own galaxy, but of numerous galaxies, stars and nebulas throughout the early and distant universe. In 2009, Spitzer ran out of the liquid helium needed to cool the telescope, thus concluding its primary mission and switching over into a less instrument-intensive “warm mission”. In 2011, scientists creatively hacked Spitzer’s instruments, transforming it into an exoplanet-studying telescope.

Worth Exploring:

a citizen science project to better understand how stars form using data from Spitzer
a new scientific discovery made by citizen scientists using Spitzer data
select astronomical images taken by Spitzer

(top image: the center of the Milky Way galaxy as seen by Spitzer's infrared camera, NASA/JPL-Caltech)