lukewarm WISE still finding NEOs
The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has run out of hydrogen in its secondary tank. This is the big one that kept the telescope cold. Now the telescope has warmed up to 45 K, and telescope emission has saturated the 22 micron band. But the 12 micron band is still working for now since the small primary hydrogen tank is still keeping the detectors cold. And the 3.4 and 4.6 micron bands are working as well as ever. The IAU Minor Planet Center just published electronic circulars announcing the discovery of two Near Earth Asteroids by WISE, 2010 QD2 and 2010 QE2. Based on optical brightness, both are a kilometer or more in diameter. The WISE data will be used to make more accurate diameter estimates later.
nwright
Ned Wright, 65 years old, is a professor at UCLA. He did far-infrared observations using a 102-cm balloon-borne telescope for his PhD thesis, and has since observed with the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, and the space-based COBE, WMAP, Spitzer and WISE missions.
2 Comments
Thanks for the update, Dr. Wright.
I saw on the “official” WISE site (http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/) a movie of the NEOs found so far by WISE:
http://www.nasa.gov/mov/457977main_wiseanim20100524-640.mov
The movie displays results as a “sweep” of the solar system, and at the time the movie was made, the sweep was incomplete.
So, this leads to two questions:
1. How much of the solar system will have been analyzed by WISE by the time the mission is done?
2. Is there any type of “follow-up” mission envisioned by the WISE team in regards to NEO detection?
Again, thanks for all the hard work!
See this video too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_d-gs0WoUw
WISE is one of many asteroid discovery programs going on, and there are proposals that seek to mount a long-term (several year) infrared search for asteroids. NEOCam is one such proposal.