Final stunning photos from the NEOWISE telescope do not disappoint

A group of stellar scientists from Caltech’s science center, IPAC, are sharing the last data drop captured by NASA’s celebrated NEOWISE telescope, marking the end of a remarkable journey in space exploration.

Launched in 2009 as WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) and later reincarnated as NEOWISE in 2013, the space telescope has spent over a decade tracing the night sky.

Its mission: Seek and study the smallest objects in our solar system — asteroids, and comets.

These near-Earth objects (NEOs), while small, have a world of information to offer in the ongoing quest for cosmic understanding.

Keeping its eye to the sky

Over its 15 years of operation, NEOWISE has had the rare opportunity to probe views of the same sky regions repeatedly.

In many cases, a region was studied over 220 times. This repetitious exploration enabled astronomers to track down and analyze objects that changed their brightness or location.

Joe Masiero, research scientist at IPAC and the Deputy Principal Investigator of the mission, expressed his gratitude.

“Being able to watch the changing sky for nearly 15 years has opened a new avenue for time-domain science, for everything from the closest asteroids to the most distant quasars,” said Masiero.

Incredible discoveries by NEOWISE

NEOWISE’s consistent sky scans have shed light on intriguing celestial objects like brown dwarfs and have revealed patterns in large comet populations.

One of its significant achievements was the characterization of over 3,000 near-Earth objects – equivalent to around 10% of the known population.

The final NEO observed by NEOWISE, an individual named 2007 LV8, benefitted from over 100 glimpses in the closing days of the survey — courtesy of its alignment with the telescope’s scan pattern.

Roc Cutri, NEOWISE Task Lead and Project Scientist at IPAC, explained the significance of this achievement.

“Because of NEOWISE’s extensive view of the sky, we get a more complete picture of the asteroids and comets in Earth’s orbital neighborhood. The data provide a unique way of understanding factors like the size and rotation period of these NEOs,” said Cutri.

Unseen images from the depths of space

The WISE and NEOWISE data releases may be primarily for researchers, but they contain some of the most stunning images of our infrared sky, according to Robert Hurt, IPAC Visualization Scientist.

Over the course of the original WISE mission, more than 100 areas of the sky were highlighted in public image releases, but these are just a sliver of the full-sky survey.

In the quest for unseen sky areas, the team overlaid the positions of previous images onto sky maps using data from WISE and other missions.

This revealed areas that had never been highlighted before but contained mesmerizing regions, filled with cosmic dust, where stars are born.

The California Nebula

One of the images that stands out is the NEOWISE’s view of the California Nebula, named after its resemblance to the Californian coastline.

This image is special to the NEOWISE data processing team at IPAC, situated in Pasadena, California. It symbolically commemorates the team’s years of dedication and hard work.

The California Nebula is located in the Milky Way, about 1,000 light-years away, in the Perseus constellation.

It is a dusty region that spans an impressive 100 light-years and is illuminated by the nearby massive star Menkib, born just a few million years ago.

“We know there are more things to discover in the NEOWISE data that we just haven’t noticed yet,” said Masiero.

“As astronomers develop new tools and techniques and as new surveys are conducted, we can be sure the NEOWISE archive will be one of the first places we look for the data needed to better understand our universe.”

The legacy of NEOWISE

The journey of NEOWISE may have ended, but its legacy is just taking off.

The wealth of data waiting to be analyzed by astronomers such as Yuna Kwon, a solar system astronomer and IPAC archive scientist, is nothing short of a treasure.

Kwon’s work on the Cometary Object Study Investigating their Nature and Evolution (COSINE) project is just beginning. This project is focused on cataloging and analyzing comets observed by NEOWISE.

Kwon studies comets because they are some of the oldest and most rudimentary objects in our solar system. Their physical properties can give us clues about the conditions during the solar system’s formation.

“Comets are like cats — they have tails and do precisely what they want,” said Kwon. “Thankfully, NEOWISE has a treasure trove of data to study these idiosyncratic objects.”

“My experience with NEOWISE data has broadened my perspective and deepened my understanding of the comet population itself, putting the observations in the broader context of the formation and evolution of the solar system.”

Looking forward, Kwon hopes to combine the knowledge gleaned from NEOWISE with new data from future observatories like NEO Surveyor and SPHEREx.

The voyage of NEOWISE might have concluded, but the wealth of discoveries it has provided, and those yet to be made, signify that the telescope’s legacy is far from over.

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Click here to access high-resolution versions of NEOWISE’s final photos.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPAC

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