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The Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), was an
infrared Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from aroun ...
space telescope A space telescope or space observatory is a telescope in outer space used to observe astronomical objects. Suggested by Lyman Spitzer in 1946, the first operational telescopes were the American Orbiting Astronomical Observatory, OAO-2 launch ...
launched in 2003. Operations ended on 30 January 2020. Spitzer was the third space telescope dedicated to infrared astronomy, following IRAS (1983) and ISO (1995–1998). It was the first spacecraft to use an
Earth-trailing orbit The Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), was an infrared space telescope launched in 2003. Operations ended on 30 January 2020. Spitzer was the third space telescope dedicated to infrared astronomy, ...
, later used by the Kepler planet-finder. The planned mission period was to be 2.5 years with a pre-launch expectation that the mission could extend to five or slightly more years until the onboard
liquid helium Liquid helium is a physical state of helium at very low temperatures at standard atmospheric pressures. Liquid helium may show superfluidity. At standard pressure, the chemical element helium exists in a liquid form only at the extremely low t ...
supply was exhausted. This occurred on 15 May 2009. Without liquid helium to cool the telescope to the very low temperatures needed to operate, most of the instruments were no longer usable. However, the two shortest-wavelength modules of the IRAC camera continued to operate with the same sensitivity as before the helium was exhausted, and continued to be used into early 2020 in the Spitzer Warm Mission. During the warm mission, the two short wavelength channels of IRAC operated at 28.7 K and were predicted to experience little to no degradation at this temperature compared to the nominal mission. The Spitzer data, from both the primary and warm phases, are archived at the Infrared Science Archive (IRSA). In keeping with NASA tradition, the telescope was renamed after its successful demonstration of operation, on 18 December 2003. Unlike most
telescope A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, absorption, or reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally meaning only an optical instrument using lenses, curved mirrors, or a combination of both to obse ...
s that are named by a board of scientists, typically after famous deceased astronomers, the new name for SIRTF was obtained from a contest open to the general public. The contest led to the telescope being named in honor of astronomer
Lyman Spitzer Lyman Spitzer Jr. (June 26, 1914 – March 31, 1997) was an American theoretical physicist, astronomer and mountaineer. As a scientist, he carried out research into star formation, plasma physics, and in 1946, conceived the idea of telescop ...
, who had promoted the concept of space telescopes in the 1940s. Spitzer wrote a 1946 report for
RAND Corporation The RAND Corporation (from the phrase "research and development") is an American nonprofit global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is financ ...
describing the advantages of an extraterrestrial observatory and how it could be realized with available or upcoming technology. He has been cited for his pioneering contributions to
rocket A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entire ...
ry and
astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest ...
, as well as "his vision and leadership in articulating the advantages and benefits to be realized from the Space Telescope Program." The Spitzer was launched on 25 August 2003 at 05:35:39  UTC from Cape Canaveral SLC-17B aboard a Delta II 7920H rocket. It was placed into a
heliocentric Heliocentrism (also known as the Heliocentric model) is the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the center of the universe. Historically, heliocentrism was opposed to geocentrism, which placed the Earth ...
(as opposed to a geocentric) orbit trailing and drifting away from Earth's orbit at approximately 0.1
astronomical unit The astronomical unit (symbol: au, or or AU) is a unit of length, roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun and approximately equal to or 8.3 light-minutes. The actual distance from Earth to the Sun varies by about 3% as Earth orbi ...
s per year (an "Earth-trailing" orbit). The
primary mirror A primary mirror (or primary) is the principal light-gathering surface (the objective) of a reflecting telescope. Description The primary mirror of a reflecting telescope is a spherical or parabolic shaped disks of polished reflective met ...
is in diameter, , made of
beryllium Beryllium is a chemical element with the symbol Be and atomic number 4. It is a steel-gray, strong, lightweight and brittle alkaline earth metal. It is a divalent element that occurs naturally only in combination with other elements to form m ...
and was cooled to . The
satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioiso ...
contains three instruments that allowed it to perform astronomical imaging and photometry from 3.6 to 160 micrometers,
spectroscopy Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets the electromagnetic spectra that result from the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter as a function of the wavelength or frequency of the radiation. Matter ...
from 5.2 to 38 micrometers, and
spectrophotometry Spectrophotometry is a branch of electromagnetic spectroscopy concerned with the quantitative measurement of the reflection or transmission properties of a material as a function of wavelength. Spectrophotometry uses photometers, known as sp ...
from 55 to 95 micrometers.


History

By the early 1970s, astronomers began to consider the possibility of placing an infrared telescope above the obscuring effects of Earth's atmosphere. In 1979, a report from the National Research Council of the
National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...
, ''A Strategy for Space Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1980s'', identified a Shuttle Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) as "one of two major astrophysics facilities
o be developed O, or o, is the fifteenth letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''o'' (pronounced ), plu ...
for Spacelab", a shuttle-borne platform. Anticipating the major results from an upcoming Explorer satellite and from the Shuttle mission, the report also favored the "study and development of ... long-duration spaceflights of infrared telescopes cooled to cryogenic temperatures." The launch in January 1983 of the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, jointly developed by the United States, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, to conduct the first infrared survey of the sky, whetted the appetites of scientists worldwide for follow-up space missions capitalizing on the rapid improvements in infrared detector technology. Earlier infrared observations had been made by both space-based and ground-based observatories. Ground-based observatories have the drawback that at infrared
wavelength In physics, the wavelength is the spatial period of a periodic wave—the distance over which the wave's shape repeats. It is the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same phase on the wave, such as two adjacent crests, tr ...
s or
frequencies Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. It is also occasionally referred to as ''temporal frequency'' for clarity, and is distinct from '' angular frequency''. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz) which is e ...
, both the Earth's
atmosphere An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. ...
and the telescope itself will radiate (glow) brightly. Additionally, the atmosphere is opaque at most infrared wavelengths. This necessitates lengthy exposure times and greatly decreases the ability to detect faint objects. It could be compared to trying to observe the stars in the optical at noon from a telescope built out of light bulbs. Previous space observatories (such as IRAS, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, and ISO, the Infrared Space Observatory) were launched during the 1980s and 1990s and great advances in astronomical technology have been made since then. Most of the early concepts envisioned repeated flights aboard the NASA Space Shuttle. This approach was developed in an era when the Shuttle program was expected to support weekly flights of up to 30 days duration. A May 1983 NASA proposal described SIRTF as a Shuttle-attached mission, with an evolving scientific instrument payload. Several flights were anticipated with a probable transition into a more extended mode of operation, possibly in association with a future space platform or space station. SIRTF would be a 1-meter class, cryogenically cooled, multi-user facility consisting of a telescope and associated focal plane instruments. It would be launched on the Space Shuttle and remain attached to the Shuttle as a Spacelab payload during astronomical observations, after which it would be returned to Earth for refurbishment prior to re-flight. The first flight was expected to occur about 1990, with the succeeding flights anticipated beginning approximately one year later. However, the Spacelab-2 flight aboard
STS-51-F STS-51-F (also known as Spacelab 2) was the 19th flight of NASA's Space Shuttle program and the eighth flight of Space Shuttle ''Challenger''. It launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on July 29, 1985, and landed eight days later on A ...
showed that the Shuttle environment was poorly suited to an onboard infrared telescope due to contamination from the relatively "dirty" vacuum associated with the orbiters. By September 1983, NASA was considering the "possibility of a long duration ree-flyerSIRTF mission". Spitzer is the only one of the Great Observatories not launched by the
Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program na ...
, as was originally intended. However, after the 1986 Challenger disaster, the Shuttle-Centaur upper stage, which would have been required to place it into its final orbit, was abandoned. The mission underwent a series of redesigns during the 1990s, primarily due to budget considerations. This resulted in a much smaller but still fully capable mission that could use the smaller Delta II expendable launch vehicle. One of the most important advances of this redesign was an Earth-trailing orbit. Cryogenic satellites that require liquid helium (LHe, T ≈ 4 K) temperatures in near-Earth orbit are typically exposed to a large heat load from Earth, and consequently require large amounts of LHe coolant, which then tends to dominate the total payload mass and limits mission life. Placing the satellite in solar orbit far from Earth allowed innovative passive cooling. The sun shield protected the rest of the spacecraft from the Sun's heat, the far side of the spacecraft was painted black to enhance passive radiation of heat, and the spacecraft bus was thermally isolated from the telescope. All of these design choices combined to drastically reduce the total mass of helium needed, resulting in an overall smaller and lighter payload, resulting in major cost savings, but with a mirror the same diameter as originally designed. This orbit also simplified telescope pointing, but did require the
NASA Deep Space Network The NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) is a worldwide network of American spacecraft communication ground segment facilities, located in the United States (California), Spain (Madrid), and Australia (Canberra), that supports NASA's interplanetar ...
for communications. The primary instrument package (telescope and cryogenic chamber) was developed by Ball Aerospace & Technologies, in Boulder, Colorado. The individual instruments were developed jointly by industrial, academic, and government institutions, the principals being
Cornell Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teac ...
, the
University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. ...
, the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) is a research institute of the Smithsonian Institution, concentrating on astrophysical studies including galactic and extragalactic astronomy, cosmology, solar, earth and planetary sciences, the ...
,
Ball Aerospace Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. is an American manufacturer of spacecraft, components and instruments for national defense, civil space and commercial space applications. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ball Corporation ( NYSE: B ...
, and Goddard Spaceflight Center. The shorter-wavelength infrared detectors were developed by
Raytheon Raytheon Technologies Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense conglomerate headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. It is one of the largest aerospace and defense manufacturers in the world by revenue and market capitaliz ...
in Goleta, California. Raytheon used indium antimonide and a doped
silicon Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic luster, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor. It is a member of group 14 in the periodic ...
detector in the creation of the infrared detectors. These detectors are 100 times more sensitive than what was available at the beginning of the project during the 1980s. The far-infrared detectors (70–160 micrometers) were developed jointly by the University of Arizona and
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, the United States Department of Energy. Located in ...
using
gallium Gallium is a chemical element with the symbol Ga and atomic number 31. Discovered by French chemist Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1875, Gallium is in group 13 of the periodic table and is similar to the other metals of the group ( alum ...
-doped
germanium Germanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ge and atomic number 32. It is lustrous, hard-brittle, grayish-white and similar in appearance to silicon. It is a metalloid in the carbon group that is chemically similar to its group neighbo ...
. The spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin. The mission was operated and managed by the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States. Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA ...
and the ''Spitzer Science Center'', located on the
Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...
campus in Pasadena, California.


Launch and commissioning


Warm mission and end of mission

Spitzer ran out of liquid helium coolant on 15 May 2009, which stopped far-IR observations. Only the IRAC instrument remained in use, and only at the two shorter wavelength bands (3.6 μm and 4.5 μm). The telescope equilibrium temperature was then around , and IRAC continued to produce valuable images at those wavelengths as the "Spitzer Warm Mission". Late in the mission, ~2016, Spitzer's distance to Earth and the shape of its orbit meant the spacecraft had to pitch over at an extreme angle to aim its antenna at Earth. The solar panels were not fully illuminated at this angle, and this limited those communications to 2.5 hours due to the battery drain. The telescope was retired on 30 January 2020Ending in 2020, NASA's Infrared Spitzer Mission Leaves a Gap in Astronomy.
Jonathan O'Callaghan. ''
Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it i ...
''. June 4, 2019.
when NASA sent a shutdown signal to the telescope from the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex (GDSCC) instructing the telescope to go into safe mode. After receiving confirmation that the command was successful, Spitzer Project Manager Joseph Hunt officially declared that the mission had ended.


Instruments

Spitzer carries three instruments on board: ; Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) : An infrared camera which operated simultaneously on four wavelengths (3.6 μm, 4.5 μm, 5.8 μm and 8 μm). Each module used a 256×256-pixel detector—the short-wavelength pair used indium antimonide technology, the long-wavelength pair used arsenic-doped silicon impurity band conduction technology.SSC IRAC (Mid IR camera) science users information page
4 October 2009.
The principal investigator was
Giovanni Fazio Giovanni Fazio is an American physicist at Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian. He is an astrophysicist who has initiated and participated in multiple observation programs. Career In 1962 he joined the Smithsonian Astrophysical Obs ...
of Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian; the flight hardware was built by
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedi ...
Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC emp ...
. ; Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) : An infrared spectrometer with four sub-modules which operate at the wavelengths 5.3–14 μm (low resolution), 10–19.5 μm (high resolution), 14–40 μm (low resolution), and 19–37 μm (high resolution). Each module used a 128×128-pixel detector—the short-wavelength pair used arsenic-doped silicon blocked impurity band technology, the long-wavelength pair used antimony-doped silicon blocked impurity band technology.SSC IRS (spectrometer) science users' information page
4 October 2009.
The principal investigator was
James R. Houck James Richard Houck (October 5, 1940 – September 18, 2015) was the Kenneth A. Wallace Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University. Houck pioneered infrared observational astronomy, designing detectors and spectrographs that were flown on sound ...
of
Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to ...
; the flight hardware was built by
Ball Aerospace Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. is an American manufacturer of spacecraft, components and instruments for national defense, civil space and commercial space applications. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ball Corporation ( NYSE: B ...
. ; Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer (MIPS) : Three detector arrays in the mid- to far-infrared (128 × 128 pixels at 24 
μm The micrometre ( international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures; SI symbol: μm) or micrometer (American spelling), also commonly known as a micron, is a unit of length in the International System of Unit ...
, 32 × 32 pixels at 70 μm, 2 × 20 pixels at 160 μm). The 24 μm detector is identical to one of the IRS short-wavelength modules. The 70 μm detector used gallium-doped germanium technology, and the 160 μm detector also used gallium-doped germanium, but with mechanical stress added to each pixel to lower the bandgap and extend sensitivity to this long-wavelength.SSC MIPS
(long wavelength 24um, 70um, & 160um) imaging photometer and spectrometer science users' information page, 4 October 2009.
The principal investigator was George H. Rieke of the
University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. ...
; the flight hardware was built by
Ball Aerospace Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. is an American manufacturer of spacecraft, components and instruments for national defense, civil space and commercial space applications. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ball Corporation ( NYSE: B ...
. All three instruments used liquid helium for cooling the sensors. Once the helium was exhausted, only the two shorter wavelengths in IRAC were used in the "warm mission".


Results

While some time on the telescope was reserved for participating institutions and crucial projects, astronomers around the world also had the opportunity to submit proposals for observing time. Prior to launch, there was a proposal call for large, coherent investigations using Spitzer. If the telescope failed early and/or ran out of cryogen very quickly, these so-called Legacy Projects would ensure the best possible science could be obtained quickly in the early months of the mission. As a requirement tied to the funding these Legacy teams received, the teams had to deliver high-level data products back to the Spitzer Science Center (and the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive) for use by the community, again ensuring the rapid scientific return of the mission. The international scientific community quickly realized the value of delivering products for others to use, and even though Legacy projects were no longer explicitly solicited in subsequent proposal calls, teams continued to deliver products to the community. The Spitzer Science Center later reinstated named "Legacy" projects (and later still "Exploration Science" projects) in response to this community-driven effort. Important targets included forming stars ( young stellar objects, or YSOs), planets, and other galaxies. Images are freely available for educational and journalistic purposes. The first released images from Spitzer were designed to show off the abilities of the telescope and showed a glowing stellar nursery, a big swirling, dusty
galaxy A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar Sys ...
, a disc of planet-forming debris, and organic material in the distant universe. Since then, many monthly press releases have highlighted Spitzer capabilities, as the NASA and
ESA , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (1 ...
images do for the
Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most ver ...
. As one of its most noteworthy observations, in 2005, Spitzer became the first telescope to directly capture light from
exoplanet An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, init ...
s, namely the "hot Jupiters" HD 209458 b and TrES-1b, although it did not resolve that light into actual images. This was the first time the light from extrasolar planets had been directly detected; earlier observations had been indirectly made by drawing conclusions from behaviors of the stars the planets were orbiting. The telescope also discovered in April 2005 that
Cohen-kuhi Tau/4 CoKu Tau/4 is a pre- main-sequence binary T Tauri star system in the constellation Taurus. The stars are surrounded by a circumbinary disc with a central cavity of radius 10 astronomical units. Before its binary nature was known, the central ...
had a planetary disk that was vastly younger and contained less mass than previously theorized, leading to new understandings of how planets are formed. In 2004, it was reported that Spitzer had spotted a faintly glowing body that may be the youngest star ever seen. The telescope was trained on a core of gas and dust known as L1014 which had previously appeared completely dark to ground-based observatories and to ISO (
Infrared Space Observatory The Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) was a space telescope for infrared light designed and operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), in cooperation with ISAS (now part of JAXA) and NASA. The ISO was designed to study infrared light at waveleng ...
), a predecessor to Spitzer. The advanced technology of Spitzer revealed a bright red hot spot in the middle of L1014. Scientists from the
University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
, who discovered the object, believe the hot spot to be an example of early star development, with the young star collecting gas and dust from the cloud around it. Early speculation about the hot spot was that it might have been the faint light of another core that lies 10 times further from Earth but along the same line of sight as L1014. Follow-up observation from ground-based near-infrared observatories detected a faint fan-shaped glow in the same location as the object found by Spitzer. That glow is too feeble to have come from the more distant core, leading to the conclusion that the object is located within L1014. (Young ''et al.'', 2004) In 2005, astronomers from the
University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...
at Madison and
Whitewater Whitewater forms in a rapid context, in particular, when a river's gradient changes enough to generate so much turbulence that air is trapped within the water. This forms an unstable current that froths, making the water appear opaque and ...
determined, on the basis of 400 hours of observation on the Spitzer Space Telescope, that the
Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked ey ...
galaxy has a more substantial bar structure across its core than previously recognized. Also in 2005, astronomers
Alexander Kashlinsky Alexander (Sasha) Kashlinsky (born 1957 in Riga) is an astronomer and cosmologist working at NASA Goddard-Space-Flight-Center, known for work on dark flow Also, and the cosmic infrared background. Kashlinsky has been interviewed by Morgan Freem ...
and John Mather of NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC emp ...
reported that one of Spitzer earliest images may have captured the light of the first stars in the universe. An image of a
quasar A quasar is an extremely luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN). It is pronounced , and sometimes known as a quasi-stellar object, abbreviated QSO. This emission from a galaxy nucleus is powered by a supermassive black hole with a mass rangin ...
in the Draco constellation, intended only to help calibrate the telescope, was found to contain an infrared glow after the light of known objects was removed. Kashlinsky and Mather are convinced that the numerous blobs in this glow are the light of stars that formed as early as 100 million years after the
Big Bang The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from t ...
, redshifted by cosmic expansion. In March 2006, astronomers reported an nebula near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, the Double Helix Nebula, which is, as the name implies, twisted into a double spiral shape. This is thought to be evidence of massive magnetic fields generated by the gas disc orbiting the
supermassive black hole A supermassive black hole (SMBH or sometimes SBH) is the largest type of black hole, with its mass being on the order of hundreds of thousands, or millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun (). Black holes are a class of astronomical obj ...
at the galaxy's center, from the nebula and from Earth. This nebula was discovered by Spitzer and published in the magazine ''
Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans ar ...
'' on 16 March 2006. In May 2007, astronomers successfully mapped the atmospheric temperature of HD 189733 b, thus obtaining the first map of some kind of an extrasolar planet. Starting in September 2006, the telescope participated in a series of surveys called the
Gould Belt Survey The Gould Belt Survey is an astronomical research project led by the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian, with the participation of several other institutions. The astronomers use observations and data captured by the Spitzer Space Tel ...
, observing the
Gould's Belt The Gould Belt is a local, partial ring of stars in the Milky Way, about 3,000 light-years long, tilted away from the galactic plane by about 16–20 degrees. It contains many O- and B-type stars, amounting to the nearest star-forming regi ...
region in multiple wavelengths. The first set of observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope was completed from 21 September 2006 through 27 September. Resulting from these observations, the team of astronomers led by Dr. Robert Gutermuth, of the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian reported the discovery of Serpens South, a cluster of 50 young stars in the Serpens constellation. Scientists have long wondered how tiny silicate crystals, which need high temperatures to form, have found their way into frozen comets, born in the very cold environment of the Solar System's outer edges. The crystals would have begun as non-crystallized, amorphous silicate particles, part of the mix of gas and dust from which the Solar System developed. This mystery has deepened with the results of the ''
Stardust Stardust may refer to: * A type of cosmic dust, composed of particles in space Entertainment Songs * “Stardust” (1927 song), by Hoagy Carmichael * “Stardust” (David Essex song), 1974 * “Stardust” (Lena Meyer-Landrut song), 2012 * ...
'' sample return mission, which captured particles from Comet Wild 2. Many of the Stardust particles were found to have formed at temperatures in excess of 1,000 K. In May 2009, Spitzer researchers from Germany, Hungary, and the Netherlands found that amorphous silicate appears to have been transformed into crystalline form by an outburst from a star. They detected the infrared signature of
forsterite Forsterite (Mg2SiO4; commonly abbreviated as Fo; also known as white olivine) is the magnesium-rich end-member of the olivine solid solution series. It is isomorphous with the iron-rich end-member, fayalite. Forsterite crystallizes in the ort ...
silicate crystals on the disk of dust and gas surrounding the star EX Lupi during one of its frequent flare-ups, or outbursts, seen by Spitzer in April 2008. These crystals were not present in Spitzer previous observations of the star's disk during one of its quiet periods. These crystals appear to have formed by radiative heating of the dust within 0.5 AU of EX Lupi. In August 2009, the telescope found evidence of a high-speed collision between two burgeoning planets orbiting a young star. In October 2009, astronomers Anne J. Verbiscer, Michael F. Skrutskie, and Douglas P. Hamilton published findings of the " Phoebe ring" of
Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; ...
, which was found with the telescope; the ring is a huge, tenuous disc of material extending from 128 to 207 times the radius of Saturn.


GLIMPSE and MIPSGAL surveys

GLIMPSE, the ''Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire'', was a series of surveys that spanned 360° of the inner region of the Milky Way galaxy, which provided the first large-scale mapping of the galaxy. It consists of more than 2 million snapshots taken in four separate wavelengths using the Infrared Array Camera.Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire
, University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Astronomy
The images were taken over a 10-year period beginning in 2003 when Spitzer launched. MIPSGAL, a similar survey that complements GLIMPSE, covers 248° of the galactic disk using the 24 and 70 μm channels of the MIPS instrument. On 3 June 2008, scientists unveiled the largest, most detailed infrared portrait of the
Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked ey ...
, created by stitching together more than 800,000 snapshots, at the 212th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in St. Louis,
Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...
. This composite survey is now viewable with the GLIMPSE/MIPSGAL Viewer.


2010s

Spitzer observations, announced in May 2011, indicate that tiny
forsterite Forsterite (Mg2SiO4; commonly abbreviated as Fo; also known as white olivine) is the magnesium-rich end-member of the olivine solid solution series. It is isomorphous with the iron-rich end-member, fayalite. Forsterite crystallizes in the ort ...
crystals might be falling down like rain on to the protostar HOPS-68. The discovery of the forsterite crystals in the outer collapsing cloud of the protostar is surprising because the crystals form at lava-like high temperatures, yet they are found in the molecular cloud where the temperatures are about . This led the team of astronomers to speculate that the bipolar outflow from the young star may be transporting the forsterite crystals from near the star's surface to the chilly outer cloud. In January 2012, it was reported that further analysis of the Spitzer observations of EX Lupi can be understood if the forsterite crystalline dust was moving away from the protostar at a remarkable average speed of . It would appear that such high speeds can arise only if the dust grains had been ejected by a bipolar outflow close to the star. Such observations are consistent with an astrophysical theory, developed in the early 1990s, where it was suggested that bipolar outflows garden or transform the disks of gas and dust that surround protostars by continually ejecting reprocessed, highly heated material from the inner disk, adjacent to the protostar, to regions of the accretion disk further away from the protostar. In April 2015, Spitzer and the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment were reported as co-discovering one of the most distant planets ever identified: a gas giant about away from Earth. In June and July 2015, the
brown dwarf Brown dwarfs (also called failed stars) are substellar objects that are not massive enough to sustain nuclear fusion of ordinary hydrogen (hydrogen-1, 1H) into helium in their cores, unlike a main sequence, main-sequence star. Instead, they have ...
was discovered using the gravitational microlensing detection method in a joint effort between Swift, Spitzer, and the ground-based Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, the first time two space telescopes have observed the same microlensing event. This method was possible because of the large separation between the two spacecraft: Swift is in low-Earth orbit while Spitzer is more than one AU distant in an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit. This separation provided significantly different perspectives of the brown dwarf, allowing for constraints to be placed on some of the object's physical characteristics. Reported in March 2016, Spitzer and Hubble were used to discover the most distant-known galaxy,
GN-z11 GN-z11 is a high-redshift galaxy found in the constellation Ursa Major. It is one of the farthest known galaxies from Earth ever discovered. The 2015 discovery was published in a 2016 paper headed by Pascal Oesch and Gabriel Brammer (Cosmic Daw ...
. This object was seen as it appeared 13.4 billion years ago.


''Spitzer Beyond''

On 1 October 2016, Spitzer began its Observation Cycle 13, a year extended mission nicknamed ''Beyond''. One of the goals of this extended mission was to help prepare for the
James Webb Space Telescope The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope which conducts infrared astronomy. As the largest optical telescope in space, its high resolution and sensitivity allow it to view objects too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble ...
, also an infrared telescope, by identifying candidates for more detailed observations. Another aspect of the ''Beyond'' mission was the engineering challenges of operating Spitzer in its progressing orbital phase. As the spacecraft moved farther from Earth on the same orbital path from the Sun, its antenna had to point at increasingly higher angles to communicate with ground stations; this change in angle imparted more and more solar heating on the vehicle while its solar panels received less sunlight.


Planet hunter

Spitzer was also put to work studying exoplanets thanks to creatively tweaking its hardware. This included doubling its stability by modifying its heating cycle, finding a new use for the "peak-up" camera, and analyzing the sensor at a sub-pixel level. Although in its "warm" mission, the spacecraft's passive cooling system kept the sensors at . Spitzer used the transit photometry and gravitational microlensing techniques to perform these observations. According to NASA's Sean Carey, "We never even considered using Spitzer for studying exoplanets when it launched. ... It would have seemed ludicrous back then, but now it's an important part of what Spitzer does." Examples of exoplanets discovered using Spitzer include
HD 219134 b HD 219134 b (or HR 8832 b) is one of at least five exoplanets orbiting HD 219134, a main-sequence star in the constellation of Cassiopeia. HD 219134 b has a size of about 1.6 , and a density of 6.4 g/cm3 and orbits at 21.25 light-years away. ...
in 2015, which was shown to be a rocky planet about 1.5 times as large as Earth in a three-day orbit around its star; and an unnamed planet found using microlensing located about from Earth. In September–October 2016, Spitzer was used to discover five of a total of seven known planets around the star TRAPPIST-1, all of which are approximately Earth-sized and likely rocky. Three of the discovered planets are located in the habitable zone, which means they are capable of supporting liquid water given sufficient parameters. Using the transit method, Spitzer helped measure the sizes of the seven planets and estimate the mass and density of the inner six. Further observations will help determine if there is liquid water on any of the planets.


See also

* Herschel Space Observatory (2009–2013) * Infrared astronomy * List of deep fields * List of space telescopes * List of largest infrared telescopes


References


External links

*
Spitzer Space Telescope
at NASA.gov
Spitzer Space Telescope
at Caltech.edu
Spitzer Space Telescope
by NASA's Solar System Exploration
GLIMPSE/MIPSGAL image viewer
at Alienearths.org
" Spitzer Space Telescope: Discovering "More Things in the Heavens" with NASA's Spitzer Project Scientist Michael Werner"
'Bridging the Gaps: A Portal for Curious Minds', 2019 {{authority control Great Observatories program Space telescopes Infrared telescopes Jet Propulsion Laboratory Lockheed Martin satellites and probes Derelict satellites in heliocentric orbit Spacecraft launched by Delta II rockets Space probes launched in 2003 2003 establishments in Florida