These are records taken by NASA’s NEOWISE telescope for 12 years. The space agency finally pieced them together, creating a timelapse map of the entire sky visible from Earth.
This week, . The feat was achieved thanks to the Near-Earth Object Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) telescope, from the same space agency.
The NEOWISE in particular “completes a trip to the middle of the Sun (6 months), taking images in all directions. Together, those images form an “all-sky” map showing the location and brightness of hundreds of millions of objects.” explains NASA.
That is how the records of more than a decade of photographs were joined -18 photos in total- that finally gave way to one of the most complete maps of the sky visible from Earth.
“Each map is a great resource for astronomers, but when viewed in sequence as a time lapse, they serve as an even stronger resource in trying to better understand the universe,” says the space agency.
The sky changed in 12 years
Also Scientists give an account of the changes that may be in heaven for a decade. “Comparing the maps can reveal distant objects that have changed position or brightness over time, which is known as ‘time domain astronomy’”, they explain.
The records specifically show stars, brown dwarfs, black holes, dying stars, and star formation regions“which allows a long-term analysis and a deeper understanding of the universe,” they point out.
And it is that the NEOWISE -originally called WISE- was launched in 2009, with the aim of detecting and scanning the skyin search of objects that are outside our Solar System, through infrared observation, for their registration and subsequent scientific study.
The telescope completed its mission in 2011, however the space agency concluded that some of its functions could still be operational, so it was decided to reuse it to track asteroids.
It was in 2013 that they updated their name, adding the NEO plugin, for “Near Earth Objects”. 10 years later, astronomers have gathered part of their records in a huge map, which NASA published this week.