I was just looking at a great pictorial article (8pp), Night Vision - NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope Lights Up The Heart of a Dark Universe, in the Dec. 2005 issue of National Geographic magazine. Launched in August 2003, this car-size telescope is 26 million miles from Earth. Spitzer utilizes 3 different instruments to capture and analyze different infrared frequencies. The telescope's infrared vision is the sharpest ever, using a mirror nearly 3 feet across, sensitive detectors cooled almost to absolute zero, along with an orbit far from the distracting heat of our planet, Earth. Spitzer is expected to run out of the liquid helium that helps cool it, in about 2008.
The color pictures in the article, compiled from Spitzer, are well worth the time to look at and to read this brief article.
Chuck Larson
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http://www.aoas.org/article.php?story=20051130134639105