NASA WISE: Mysteries of 'Interstellar' Space revealed

This enormous mosaic of the Milky Way galaxy from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), shows dozens of dense clouds, called nebulae. 

Many nebulae seen here are places where new stars are forming, creating bubble like structures that can be dozens to hundreds of light-years in size.

Image Credit: NASA

The new Paramount film "Interstellar" imagines a future where astronauts must find a new planet suitable for human life after climate change destroys the Earth's ability to sustain us.

Multiple NASA missions are helping avoid this dystopian future by providing critical data necessary to protect Earth.

Yet the cosmos beckons us to explore farther from home, expanding human presence deeper into the solar system and beyond.

For thousands of years we've wondered if we could find another home among the stars. We're right on the cusp of answering that question.

If you step outside on a very dark night you may be lucky enough to see many of the 2,000 stars visible to the human eye.

They're but a fraction of the billions of stars in our galaxy and the innumerable galaxies surrounding us.

Multiple NASA missions are helping us extend humanity's senses and capture starlight to help us better understand our place in the universe.

Largely visible light telescopes like Hubble show us the ancient light permeating the cosmos, leading to groundbreaking discoveries like the accelerating expansion of the universe.

Through infrared missions like Spitzer, SOFIA and WISE, we've peered deeply through cosmic dust, into stellar nurseries where gases form new stars.

With missions like Chandra, Fermi and NuSTAR, we've detected the death throes of massive stars, which can release enormous energy through supernovas and form the exotic phenomenon of black holes.

Yet it was only in the last few years that we could fully grasp how many other planets there might be beyond our solar system.

Some 64 million miles (104 kilometers) from Earth, the Kepler Space Telescope stared at a small window of the sky for four years.

As planets passed in front of a star in Kepler's line of view, the spacecraft measured the change in brightness.

Kepler was designed to determine the likelihood that other planets orbit stars. Because of the mission, we now know it's possible every star has at least one planet.

Solar systems surround us in our galaxy and are strewn throughout the myriad galaxies we see.

Though we have not yet found a planet exactly like Earth, the implications of the Kepler findings are staggering, there may very well be many worlds much like our own for future generations to explore.

NASA also is developing its next exoplanet mission, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which will search 200,000 nearby stars for the presence of Earth-size planets.



The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest stars in the sky.

In a two-year survey of the solar neighbourhood, TESS will monitor more than 500,000 stars for temporary drops in brightness caused by planetary transits.

This first-ever spaceborne all-sky transit survey will identify planets ranging from Earth-sized to gas giants, around a wide range of stellar types and orbital distances. No ground-based survey can achieve this feat.

NASA Spitzer Closure: Decreased funding battle means loss of Science

As NASA funding continue to dissipate, space agency officials are left trying, frustratingly, to figure out what's worth paying for and the Spitzer Space Telescope is just the latest in a growing list of defunded and soon-to-be-extinct projects.

Since the Apollo missions to the moon ended in 1973, NASA's budget has steadily declined, from 1.35 percent of the federal government's total expenditures to less than 0.6 percent today.

Although the 2014 budget recovered a small portion of previously cut funds, the writing has been on the wall for some time now: do more with less.

Or just do less. So far, that's been the approach -- a run of tough decisions, a run of cuts. The Space Shuttle program was retired.

More recently, Congress cut funding for NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a 747 jetliner outfitted with a telescope that climatologists use to study the infrared-absorbing properties of the atmosphere's water vapour.

"It turned out that we had to make very difficult choices about where we go with astrophysics and planetary science and Earth science, and SOFIA happened to be what fell off the plate this time," NASA administrator Charles Bolden said shortly after the latest budget proposal came out.

Even more recently, a NASA review panel, convened every two years to determine the merits of various NASA programs, decided to decommission the Spitzer Space Telescope, the the first telescope to directly capture the light from extrasolar planets. A last ditch effort to save Spitzer looks likely to be unsuccessful.

Yet as NASA funding shrinks, the possibilities of scientific exploration continue to grow, leaving NASA's task of project decision making tougher than ever.

Go back to the moon, some say. How about a mission to Jupiter's moon Europa? What about deep-space exploration? Or Mars?

The House is expected to soon vote on a spending bill that would fill some gaps in NASA's funding. Even so, NASA's purse strings are likely to remain tight and tangled for the foreseeable future.

Forceful neighbours cause stellar twins to diverge

Cosmic twins the Luminous Blue Variable Nebula LBV3 (top row) and the Pistol Nebula (bottom row) display how even large objects in the universe can be affected neighbourly influences. 

The left images were taken by the Faint Object InfraRed Camera (FORCAST) on NASA’s airborne SOFIA Telescope. 

The right images of each nebula were taken by a near-infrared spectrometer on the Hubble Space Telescope.

Much like an environment influences people, so too do cosmic communities affect even giant dazzling stars: Peering deep into the Milky Way galaxy's center from a high-flying observatory, Cornell astronomers have discovered identical, rare stars whose diverging dusty and gaseous garb are strictly influenced by an intrusive cluster of neighbours.

Scarce, short-lived, hyperbright stars called luminous blue variables – a million times brighter than our own sun – inhabit the center of the Milky Way galaxy, 25,000 light years from Earth, which loiters in the Milky Way boonies.

FORCAST team on NASA’s airborne SOFIA Telescope

Astronomers have found two luminous blue variable (LBV) stars – one called the Pistol star and the other named LBV3 – to be identical.

As stars, they are themselves neighbors, but their dusty, gaseous outer cloaks (outer nebulae) are substantially different.

Both are the same size and have identical gas-to-dust mass ratios and total gas masses, according to a paper published April 2 in the Astrophysical Journal.

"Think identical stars with different shells. We found that the nebula of the insanely bright Pistol star is warped, while the LBV3 is an almost-perfect spherical shell," says Ryan M. Lau, Cornell doctoral candidate in the field of astronomy.

"These LBVs are rare stars, and we only know about 12 that exist, but they are surrounded by these dust- and gas-filled nebulae that look different."

Both the Pistol star and LBV3 formed under similar conditions, according to the researchers. Dust in the Pistol star's nebula is brilliant, compressed, externally heated and ionized, thanks to its proximity to neighbors in the Quintuplet Cluster.

By contrast, the LBV3 nebula is dim, symmetrical and cooler. LBV3's nebula progresses in an outward fashion naturally, thanks to its relative lack of proximity to anything.

"The initial attention draw to the Pistol star was its high luminosity, [but] the nebulae around it and its sister star [LBV3] have turned out to be quite interesting."

"While the Pistol star is a member of the Quintuplet Cluster – although on the outskirts of the cluster – it is about six light-years away from the cluster's center."

"That's about 1.5 times the distance from our solar system to the nearest star," says senior author Terry Herter, Cornell professor of astronomy and department chair.

"It's impressive that even at this distance, the rest of the Quintuplet Cluster exerts a large influence on the Pistol nebula."

In optical ground telescopes, cosmic dust obfuscates both stars. To cut through the cosmic grime, astronomers need a midrange infrared telescope.

To explore far above atmospheric waters, the astronomers examined the inner galaxy July 1, 2013, from SOFIA (the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy), a modified Boeing 747 SP that climbs to 43,000 feet.

To spy these super luminous objects, the group used FORCAST, the Faint Object InfraRed Camera for the SOFIA Telescope, developed at Cornell.

More information: "Nature Versus Nurture: Luminous Blue Variable Nebulae in and near Massive Stellar Clusters at the Galactic Center." Ryan M. Lau, Terry L. Herter, Mark R. Morris, Joseph D. Adams. arXiv:1403.5298 [astro-ph.GA] arxiv.org/abs/1403.5298

NASA SOFIA: Flying Telescope May Be Mothballed This Year

NASA's SOFIA flying observatory is framed by a rainbow following a shower as it sits on a ramp at Christchurch International Airport, New Zealand during its first Southern Hemisphere deployment. 

Credit: NASA / Carla Thomas

NASA's SOFIA, the flying astronomical observatory, will be grounded later this year unless outside funding can be found for the project, NASA officials announced Tuesday (March 4).

The White House's 2015 federal budget request, which was released Tuesday, slashes funding for the space agency's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a modified Boeing 747 aircraft that scans the heavens using an 8.2-foot-wide (2.5 meters) telescope.

SOFIA will continue flying science missions through the remainder of the 2014 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, but the aircraft will have to be mothballed thereafter.

It cannot continue its operations without an infusion of cash from oustide NASA, agency officials said.

"This is a very disappointing thing, I think, to a lot of people who have been working on it," Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., which maps out SOFIA science flights, told reporters Tuesday.

"I'm going to work very, very hard to find international partners on this, to enable us to continue with this mission."

This NASA image shows the SOFIA telescope during testing procedures in May 2010, before the instrument's first science flight. 

Credit: NASA/Tom TschidaView

NASA already partners with one international organization on the SOFIA mission, the German Aerospace Center, DLR.

NASA chief Charles Bolden has talked to Johann-Dietrich Wörner, his DLR counterpart, about the situation.

Johann-Dietrich Wörner

"DLR are equally concerned," Worden said. "They've agreed to work with us to see if there's a way forward."

SOFIA is the successor to NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO), which was retired in 1995.

Like Kuiper, SOFIA is optimized to view in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

During its roughly 10-hour science flights, the observatory cruises at an altitude of 41,000 to 45,000 feet (12,500 to 13,700 m), getting above 99.5 percent of the infrared-absorbing water vapour in Earth's atmosphere.

SOFIA also boasts another advantage over ground-based facilities, mission officials say: mobility.

The plane can chase down one-off events, such as a June 2011 occultation of a distant star by Pluto, which was visible only from a small area over the Pacific Ocean.

"SOFIA has earned its way; it has done very well," Bolden said during a press briefing on Tuesday. "But I had to make a choice."

SOFIA Airborne observatory records outer space in unprecedented detail

SOFIA records outer space in unprecedented detail.

Soaring at 41,000 feet in the air, a team of Ithaca College physics students and a professor recently took photos from a flying observatory to help discover what makes up our universe.

A collaboration between NASA and other researchers, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) provides key insight into the formation and evolution of stars and planets.

SOFIA allows scientists to observe infrared light and collect data—such as never-before-seen images of Jupiter and the galaxy M82—nearly impossible to obtain previously.

SOFIA is made up of an eight-foot-wide, 17-ton telescope situated within a modified Boeing 747.

While in flight, the cavity door of the plane opens, similar to a large garage door opening, to expose the giant telescope and capture images of space.

A non-pressurised open area in the fuselage, or side of the plane, is then created to route the airflow over the telescope while the aircraft flies at 500 mph.

Luke Keller

Luke Keller, Ithaca College associate professor of physics, is a member of the team assisting in the test flight series for the airborne telescope using an infrared camera system referred to as FORCAST (Faint Object Infrared Camera for the SOFIA Telescope).

"Astronomers and physicists are constantly looking for better ways to view space and learn about our environment beyond Earth's atmosphere," Keller says.

"With SOFIA now in operation, we are going to see the universe in detail never before possible."

Keller is responsible for developing and testing the software used in flight to process and analyze data, assisting with optical testing, and collaborating on the development of the camera's calibration system.

The ability to image astronomical objects and environments at different infrared wavelengths enables Keller and his colleagues to analyse physical characteristics such as temperature and composition, thus allowing the scientists to watch dynamic processes taking place.

Over the next 20 years, additional instruments will be installed on the telescope, each one designed to investigate targeted infrared wavelengths and capture even more detail from space.

NASA SOFIA: Through the Looking Glass

The NASA logo on Bldg. 703 at the Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif., is reflected in the 2.5-meter primary mirror of the SOFIA observatory's telescope.

SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, is an airborne observatory, built to complement the Hubble, Spitzer and Herschel space telescopes, as well as major Earth-based telescopes.

SOFIA features a German-built 100-inch (2.5 meter) diameter far-infrared telescope weighing 20 tons mounted in the rear fuselage of a modified Boeing 747SP aircraft. (See SOFIA at DLR) It is one of the premier space science programs of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

SOFIA is a joint program between NASA and the DLR, the German Aerospace Centre.

Image Credit: NASA/Tom Tschida

NASA SOFIA Stratospheric Observatory

SOFIA, NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, is ready to take off into the heavens for its first science flight this week.

Two astronomy professors, Mark Morris of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and Paul Harvey of the University of Colorado at Boulder will use the Faint Object InfraRed Camera for the SOFIA Telescope (FORCAST), a mid-spectrum infrared camera developed by Terry Herter of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. to learn more about star formation from the airborne observatory.

"My primary target is the Orion nebula, which is a star formation factory," Morris said. "It's close and offers the best views of stars forming right before our very eyes."

Morris hopes to better understand the complexities of the star formation process by viewing the infrared energy emitted by warm dust in the interstellar clouds that are forming the stars. The dust is heated by the luminous, newborn stars.

"Nature doesn't form stars in isolation," he said. "It forms them in clusters, out of natal clouds that collapse under their own gravity.

If you observe carefully, you start to get a clearer picture of how all the new stars are interacting with each other and with their environment."

Harvey's immediate goal is to use the unique combination of high image IR resolution available with SOFIA and FORCAST to study the distribution of dust and gas around Sharpless 140, a young, forming star cluster. Sharpless 140 lies almost 3,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cepheus.

"Observing the birth of stars in our own galaxy is critical, because planetary systems form at the same time that a central star is formed," Harvey said. "Some of the most luminous galaxies in the universe appear to be powered by extreme bursts of star formation."

Astronomy Picture of the Day: SOFIA and Jupiter

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Jupiter from the Stratosphere
Credit: Infrared - NASA, USRA, DSI, Cornell Univ. / Visible - Anthony Wesley

Explanation: SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, captured its "first light" images on May 26, from an altitude of 35,000 feet.

While flying above most of planet Earth's infrared-absorbing water vapor, SOFIA's premier infrared views of the cosmos included this remarkable false-color image (right panel) of Jupiter. For comparison, on the left is a recent, ground-based visible light image.

Both show our solar system's ruling gas giant without its dark southern equatorial belt (normally seen in the upper hemisphere in this orientation). That familiar feature faded from view early in May. But the bright white stripe in SOFIA's image is a region of Jupiter's clouds transparent to infrared light, offering a glimpse below the cloud tops.

'First Light' As SOFIA Completes Observation Flight

The German-American Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, completed an important milestone by achieving 'first light' when it performed its first observations during the night between 25 and 26 May 2010.

SOFIA is the only airborne observatory in the world, operated jointly by NASA and the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR). The observatory carried out observations of astronomical objects at infrared wavelengths in flight.

First Light
The modified Boeing 747SP houses a 2.7-metre reflecting telescope built in Germany under DLR management. The aircraft took off at 21:45 local time from its home base, the NASA Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, California.

During a eight-hour flight that reached 11,000 metres in altitude, the 18-person crew of scientists, engineers and technicians tested the telescope's performance to its limits and took the first infrared images of test objects in the night sky.

The crowning achievement of the night: scientists recorded images of the Messier 82 (M82) galaxy and of Jupiter, at wavelengths unobservable by ground- or space-based telescopes.

The composite image of Jupiter shows heat pouring out of the planet's interior through holes in its clouds. In the infrared image of M82, it is possible to look through the galaxy's interstellar dust clouds to show several 'starburst' knots in which stars are forming by the tens of thousands.

SOFIA Airborne telescope: Makes its first observations - New Scientist

Airborne telescope makes its first observations - space - 28 May 2010 - New Scientist

SOFIA snapped this composite infrared image of Jupiter (right) during its first flight as a working observatory. The white stripe shows a region of relatively transparent clouds that reveal the planet's warm interior (Image: NASA)

1 more image

A jet with a large telescope built into its side has snapped its first in-flight images of the night sky. The flight begins a new phase for the infrared observatory, called SOFIA, which was once in danger of cancellation due to cost overruns.

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) is a Boeing 747 jet that has been modified to carry a 2.5-metre telescope provided by the German Space Agency. The observatory is designed to fly at an altitude of about 12 kilometres.

That altitude is above more than 99 per cent of the atmosphere's water vapour, which obscures the sky at infrared wavelengths. That means SOFIA will receive roughly 80 per cent of the infrared light that hits orbiting space telescopes. It can be used to study phenomena such as star and planet formation in the Milky Way.

The telescope took off on Wednesday from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California, for its first in-flight night observations. Images taken during the six-hour flight are sharp enough for the telescope to perform "front-line astronomical research", SOFIA project scientist Pam Marcum said in a statement.

SOFIA, which cost more than $1 billion to develop, was nearly cancelled due to delays and cost overruns. NASA decided to restore funding to the project in 2006, after criticism from astronomers and a technical review that said the project faced no insurmountable challenges.

NASA aims to fly SOFIA several times a week for about 20 years.