WISE continues to find comets and asteroids through its NEOWISE program led by Amy Mainzer. The latest and quite interesting comet found by WISE is Comet C/2010 D4 (WISE) which has a perihelion distance of 7.2 AU! My list of WISE solar system discoveries shows that comets D1, D2 and D3 were all discovered by WISE as well.

WISE has observed and analyzed more than 250,000 framesets, each with 4 infrared colors using a megapixel array. So the total number of observed pixels in images with good image quality crossed over one trillion in last night’s downloads. More than 20 percent of the sky has been covered.

Minor Planet Electronic Circular 2010-C23 announces the discovery of a
comet by WISE: COMET P/2010 B2 (WISE). It’s quite faint - about 20th magnitude in
the optical.

As of 11:15 UT on 7 Feb 2010, WISE has taken 205674 framesets, each with four images covering 47×47 arc-minutes at 3.4, 4.6, 12 and 22 microns.  16.8 percent of the sky has been covered to the desired depth (or deeper).  You can monitor the current coverage here.

WISE is now in the Heavens Above orbit database. It will be favorably placed over Los Angeles on the morning of Dec 24, and I will try to observe it. You can get predictions for you own location from Heavens Above and try to spot it. If you try leave a comment describing your observation.

Update: I tried on the mornings of 23 Dec 2009 and 24 Dec 2009 and failed both days. The first day the Sun was not far enough down and a lot of dust had been blown about by the high winds, but for the second conditions were good. WISE must be a lot harder to see than COBE, which makes sense given the configurations of the two satellites.

Update 31 Dec 2009:  I saw WISE this morning, several degrees West of the bowl of the Big Dipper, with binoculars, against a brightening dawn sky at 06:18 Pacific time.  A grand end to the International year of Astronomy.

I was trying to watch streaming video from KIPAC about the new CDMS results but the video froze at “Opening the Box” and stayed frozen until it came back on just as the Conclusions slide was taken down. So I spent 50 minutes and still don’t know what the results are!

UPDATE: I would have done much better to monitor the live blogging at
Cosmic Variance. 2 events seen against a background of 0.66. 23% probability to exceed by chance. Move along people, there is nothing to see here.

My WISE satellite launch December 14! I had to be in the MDC control room, and was told it was impolite to rush out at launch and watch the rocket go by, so I had to watch the TV screens in the MDC. So the last time I got to see WISE was the night before during the tower rollback:

The Delta II rocket with WISE in the fairing after the service tower was rolled back the night before the launch.

I had another good view of the space station and space shuttle last night, on very similar orbits but about 20 seconds apart. Since it was Thanksgiving in the United States, a large number of dinner guests also got to see the sight. The shuttle landed this morning, but the station is making a pass right over Los Angeles this evening, reaching magnitude -3.4, brighter than Jupiter at its brightest, behind only the Moon, Venus, and Iridium flares in terms of brightness. Again, Heavens Above is a great site for getting satellite predictions for your location.

In A Win For Uppercase Letters (AWFUL), the NASA Public Affairs Office (PAO) has agreed acronyms should be capitalized even if they spell a word, if they are short enough. So WISE will remain WISE, not Wise. Today is the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, and I am thankful for uppercase acronyms.

Last night I saw the space station followed by the space shuttle about 10 seconds later. They were easily visible from my house in Los Angeles. Go to Heavens Above to get predictions for your area. The shuttle is scheduled to land on Friday, which means that WISE will have less competition for coverage by the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System.