* Astronomy

WISE is a NASA-funded scientific research project that will provide a vast storehouse of knowledge about the solar system, the Milky Way, and the Universe. Among the objects WISE will study are asteroids, the coolest and dimmest stars, and the most luminous galaxies.


NASA SAYS: 'BUILD IT AND INFRARED SURPRISES WILL COME'
Engineers are rolling up their sleeves in preparation for building a telescope that will find the nearest star-like objects and the brightest galaxies. NASA has approved the start of construction on a new mission called the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which will scan the entire sky in infrared light.

"There's a whole infrared sky out there full of surprises. By surveying the entire sky, we are bound to find new and unexpected objects" - Dr. Edward Wright, principal investigator for the mission at the University of California, Los Angeles.

An estimated $300-million mission, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or "Wise," has been in the planning stages for the past eight years. It is scheduled to launch into an Earth orbit in late 2009. It will spend seven months collecting data.
Such extensive sky coverage means the mission will find and catalogue all sorts of celestial eccentrics. These may include brown dwarfs, or failed stars, that are closer to Earth than Proxima Centauri, the nearest star other than our sun. Brown dwarfs are balls of gas that begin life like stars but lack the mass to ignite their internal fires and light up like normal stars. They do, however, produce warm infrared glows that Wise will be able to see.

"Brown dwarfs are lurking all around us. We believe there are more brown dwarfs than stars in the nearby universe, but we haven't found many of them because they are too faint in visible light" - Dr. Peter Eisenhardt, project scientist for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

Wright, Eisenhardt and other scientists recently identified brown dwarfs using NASA's infrared Spitzer Space Telescope. Wise will vastly expand the search, uncovering those brown dwarfs closest to Earth that might make ideal targets for future planet-hunting missions. Recent Spitzer findings support the notion that planets might orbit brown dwarfs.
Wise might also find the most luminous galaxies in the universe, some so far away that their light has taken 11.5 billion years to reach Earth. Galaxies in the distant, or early, universe were much brighter than our own Milky Way galaxy, but dust thought to exist in these objects blocks much of their ultraviolet and visible light. These dusty coats light up at infrared wavelengths; however, the galaxies are few and far between, so they can be difficult to find. Wise will comb the whole sky in search of them.

"It's hard to find the most energetic galaxies if you don't know where to look. We're going to look everywhere" - Dr. Peter Eisenhardt.

The spacecraft's detectors will be approximately 500 times more sensitive than those of a previous infrared survey mission, called the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, a joint European-NASA venture that operated in 1983.

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