{"id":213,"date":"2011-07-18T14:08:33","date_gmt":"2011-07-18T18:08:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/astronomy.snjr.net\/blog\/?p=213"},"modified":"2011-07-18T14:08:33","modified_gmt":"2011-07-18T18:08:33","slug":"neowise-space-infrared-survey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/astronomy.snjr.net\/blog\/?p=213","title":{"rendered":"NEOWISE Space Infrared Survey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>New findings are in from <a href=\"http:\/\/neo.jpl.nasa.gov\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">NEOWISE<\/a>, the Near Earth Object (<a href=\"http:\/\/neo.jpl.nasa.gov\/neo\/\" target=\"_blank\">NEO<\/a>, typically a comet or asteroid) observing component of NASA&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/wise.ssl.berkeley.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/mission_pages\/WISE\/main\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">WISE<\/a>) telescope. \u00a0WISE is\/was an infrared surveyor satellite set into polar orbit in 2010. The spacecraft was designed with a limited life span of approximately ten months: one month for testing and checkout, six months for a whole-sky survey, and three months for a second survey meant to identify any changes that had taken place in the sky since the first survey.<\/p>\n<p>April 14, 2011 marked the date of the preliminary release of WISE data. The final release won&#8217;t happen for another ten months or so, but we already have some interesting results from released data. Today it was announced that Comet Hartley 2 is leaving a bumpy, pebbly trail behind it with grains as large as golf balls. The last time the comet was surveyed (November 2010, as part of NASA&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/mission_pages\/epoxi\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">EPOXI<\/a> mission), data showed that the comet was streaming golf ball-\u00a0to basketball-sized fluffy ice particles. The NEOWISE results indicate that the smaller, golf ball-sized pieces survive farther away from the comet than scientists previously thought, comprising at least part of the comet&#8217;s debris trail. According to the NEOWISE team, larger chunks are less likely to be pushed away from the comet&#8217;s trail by radiation pressure of the sun. Since these observed particles are in the trail, they must be (relatively) small.<\/p>\n<p>The team was also surprised to note that Hartley 2 is ejecting carbon dioxide gas at a distance of 2.3 AUs from the Sun. Although EPOXI had detected carbon dioxide streaming from comet, it was at a distance considerably closer to the Sun. So, that&#8217;s two new things we know about comet behavior today that we didn&#8217;t know yesterday. Money well spent.<\/p>\n<p>An <a href=\"http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1107.2637\" target=\"_blank\">abstract<\/a> of the paper, &#8220;WISE\/NEOWISE observations of comet 103P\/Hartley 2,&#8221; which has been accepted by the\u00a0<em>Astrophysical Journal<\/em>, \u00a0can be read online. If you have access, you download a .pdf of the <a href=\"http:\/\/arxiv.org\/ftp\/arxiv\/papers\/1107\/1107.2637.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">entire paper<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New findings are in from NEOWISE, the Near Earth Object (NEO, typically a comet or asteroid) observing component of NASA&#8217;s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope. \u00a0WISE is\/was an infrared surveyor satellite set into polar orbit in 2010. The spacecraft was designed with a limited life span of approximately ten months: one month for testing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-instruments","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astronomy.snjr.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astronomy.snjr.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astronomy.snjr.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astronomy.snjr.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astronomy.snjr.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/astronomy.snjr.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astronomy.snjr.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astronomy.snjr.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astronomy.snjr.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}