WISE: The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

1

Scientific paper

WISE will map the entire sky at 3.3, 4.7, 12 and 23 microns with sensitivities of 0.12, 0.16. 0.65, and 2.6 mJy. WISE will find the most luminous galaxies in the universe, the closest stars to the Sun, and detect most main belt asteroids larger than 3 km. WISE will be placed into a Sun-synchronous polar orbit on a Delta 7320-10 rocket, rotating at a constant rate while a scan mirror freezes the line of sight during each exposure, covering the sky in 6 months following a one month checkout. Orbit to orbit overlap provides 8 or more exposures at each location.
The instrument, provided by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, includes an all-reflective aluminum telescope with a 40 cm primary built by SSG-Tinsley, a solid hydrogen cryostat built by Lockheed-Martin's Advanced Technology Center, and 1024x1024 pixel Si:As and HgCdTe arrays built by DRS and Teledyne. Dichroic beamsplitters allow simultaneous images in the four bands over a 47'x47' field of view with 5" resolution to be obtained every 11 seconds. Ball Aerospace is providing the spacecraft, including a 500W fixed solar array, Li-ion battery, two star trackers, reaction wheels, and torque rods. The 50 GB per day of images are losslessly compressed, stored in flash memory, and downlinked at 100 Mbps four times per day using a fixed antenna and TDRSS satellites.
The Infrared Processing and Analysis Center will process the data and deliver the image atlas and source catalog, with a preliminary release 6 months after the survey, and a final release 2 years after the survey. JPL manages the project for UCLA PI Ned Wright, and conducts mission operations. Education and Public Outreach is provided by UC Berkeley's Space Science Laboratory. WISE hardware is presently being integrated and tested, with launch scheduled in November 2009.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

WISE: The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with WISE: The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and WISE: The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1705569

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.