The new Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer telescope project, led by Edward Wright at UCLA, will help researchers discover and analyze previously unseen objects in our solar system and beyond, said Wright, a professor of physics and astronomy and principal investigator of the telescope project.
“We have a deep-seated desire to know what the universe is like and how our solar system came into being,” Wright said.
The telescope will take infrared photographs of distant stars and galaxies to learn about the formation of the Milky Way galaxy and our solar system, Wright said.
“UCLA is really maintaining its dominant position in the field of infrared astronomy,” Wright said.
Observing objects in the infrared spectrum is a technique that will become more popular in the field of astronomy in the future, Wright said.
The telescope, which uses four specific infrared wavelengths to take photos of the entire sky, catalogs moving and non-moving objects in our solar system and beyond, Wright said.
These wavelengths are close to the wavelengths that objects at room temperature emit, Wright said. The telescope is sensitive to objects that emit energy at the same wavelength, he added.
Such objects have temperatures that are too low to emit visible light, but the telescope will be able to observe many of these objects using infrared light, Wright said.
Through the project, researchers are looking to catalog several hundred million objects that have not been seen before, Wright said.
The project represents the progression in the field of astronomy toward better technology that can help researchers learn more about the universe, said Veronica Benitez, a fourth-year astrophysics student and president of the Undergraduate Astronomy Society.
“I’m just thinking of how many more discoveries we are going to find from this,” Benitez said.
The last telescope that used these specific wavelengths to map the entire sky was called the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, which was implemented about 26 years ago, Wright said.
The new telescope is about 100 to 1,000 times more sensitive than the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, Wright said. The previous telescope had a resolution of about 62 pixels while the current telescope has a total resolution of 4 million pixels, he added.
“Because of these great new advances in detector technology, we’re able to be so much more sensitive than (the Infrared Astronomical Satellite), and we can detect so many more sources,” said Amy Mainzer, principal investigator of finding near-Earth objects using the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer telescope.
The telescope is using updated computer and circuit technology that was not available to the infrared astronomical telescope 26 years ago, Mainzer said.
“It’s like an update of your (computer’s) operating system after 26 years,” Mainzer said.
Mainzer is also a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
At UCLA, Wright oversees the telescope project and the work of the laboratory. The laboratory manages the systems that are used to build, test and operate the telescope, Mainzer said.
The telescope launched in December and began its survey of the sky in January. It will spend nine months surveying the entire sky, Wright said.
In four years, the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be managed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center, will operate in the same wavelengths as the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer telescope, Wright said. The James Webb telescope will take detailed photos of specific objects, he said.
The data that is currently being collected from the telescope will act as a road map for the James Webb telescope’s lens, he added.
While the telescope catalogs objects as far as distant galaxies, it also photographs asteroids and comets with orbits that come close to the Earth’s orbit, Mainzer said.
Researchers use the information gathered from professional and amateur observers around the world to assess the possibilities of an impact by the object, Mainzer said.
Although the project involves gathering data from observers worldwide, seeing this project being managed by a professor on campus brings many opportunities for students to get involved with other types of on-campus research, Benitez said.
“It’s good that we’re given an opportunity to research with … these professors,” Benitez said.