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Hot Launch, Cool WISE

By catdynamics on December 14, 2009.

WISE launched successfully this morning, spacecraft is in orbit and responsive.

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer launched successfully from Vandenburg this morning.



click to embiggen

Spacecraft is separated, oriented, and started cooling. Oh, and, obviously, communicating...

Dratt. Wish I'd been out at the coast still, that'd have been a launch worth getting up to watch, even from a distance.

WISE is a small explorer class mission, doing an all sky mid-infrared survey.
The spatial resolution is modest, as is the depth, but it is still better than anything before, and much needed as a complement to the targeted narrow field infrared missions, especially the hopefully-soon-upcoming JWST (and, I do wish they hadn't named the bloomin' thing before launch, not that I'm superstitious or anything, but still, don't they know anything?!).

Ned has the useful facts about WISE:

  • 3.4-22 μ, all sky, in case you'd forgotten, 11 second exposures
  • over 100 times more sensitive than IRAS at the longer wavelengths
  • repeats half the sky after first round (then probably runs dry of hydrogen ice cryogen)
  • 40 cm mirror, with 4 colour single camera (HgCdTe and Si:As 10242 arrays)
  • 47' square image, 6" resolution oversampled at 3" - with 12" diffraction in 22μ band.

Hm, I need to think about the depth, this may be good for something I've been pondering...

good image selection at Ned's site, including simulated survey images

I like it.

Tags
astro

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AKARI had both pointed and all-sky survey modes. For comparable wavelengths, IRAS (all-sky survey) limit was about 0.5 Jy at 25 microns, AKARI's all-sky survey got to about 120 milliJy at 18 microns, and WISE is supposed to go to 2.6 milliJy at 23 microns. So about a factor of 40 deeper.

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