NASA's Spitzer Telescope Offers 10 Years of Stunning Space Pictures

By: By Edecio Martinez and Michele Berger

Published: August 28,2013

 

 

 

 

 

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A composite image of N49, the brightest supernova remnant in optical light in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The Chandra X-ray image (blue) shows million-degree gas in the center. The infrared image from Spitzer (red) shows much cooler gas at the outer parts of the remnant. (NASA)

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Explosions of bright color illuminated by space’s dark black background. Those are the beautiful images the Spitzer Space Telescope has shown us, of comets and asteroids, stars and planets. It’s celebrating 10 years in orbit.
The scope has been lauded for its many discoveries, including the largest ring of Saturn. “The enormous ring, a wispy band of ice and dust particles, is very faint in visible light, but Spitzer’s infrared detectors were able to pick up the glow from its heat,” NASA wrote in a news release. Spitzer also spotted light beyond our solar system — something it wasn’t originally built to do.
Spitzer was initially called the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, but got renamed after launch for the father of space telescopes, an astronomer named Lyman Spitzer (not for the other Spitzer who likely comes to mind).
Even as NASA celebrates the first decade with this scope, it has big plans for the next 10 years. “Moving into its second decade of scientific scouting from an Earth-trailing orbit,” NASA stated, “Spitzer continues to explore the cosmos near and far. One additional task is helping NASA observe potential candidates for a developing mission to capture, redirect and explore a near-Earth asteroid.” (You’ve probably heard that NASA is trying to lasso an asteroid, a directive from the Obama administration.) It will evaluate the first asteroid candidate this coming October.(MORE: Watch a star being born) 
For now, we can continue enjoying the splendors of space that Spitzer reveals, beauty we can’t see with the naked eye. “The spectacular images that it continues to return, and its cutting-edge science,” said scientist Michael Werner of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “go far beyond anything we could have imagined when we started on this journey more than 30 years ago.”
Click through the slideshow above to experience many of the stunning views Spitzer has captured. For more information and images, check out NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab gallery.
MORE: Beautiful Photos from this Year’s Perseid Meteor Shower

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A Perseid meteor, upper left, streaks across the sky over a building at the Techatticup Mine early Aug. 13, 2010 in Eldorado Canyon, Nev. The annual display is a result of Earth's orbit passing through debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

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