From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Thu Mar 27 2003 - 14:04:18 PST
----- Original Message -----
From: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2003 3:46 PM
To: ljk4_at_msn.com
Subject: The Sky's the Limit: Grand Finale for Twin-Telescope Survey
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Contact: Jane Platt (818) 354-0880
NEWS RELEASE: 2003-041
March 27, 2003
The Sky's the Limit: Grand Finale for Twin-Telescope Survey
The celestial harvest from astronomy's most thorough high-resolution
digital survey of the entire sky, completed by twin infrared
telescopes, is now online for scientists to scrutinize and the entire
world to savor.
An atlas of about 5 million pictures from the grand finale of this
milestone in modern astronomy is available at
http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/gallery .
"The public will 'ooooh and aaaah' at the pictures, while scientists
will mine the data for decades, learning a great deal more than we
currently know about our Milky Way galaxy, its hundreds of millions of
stars, and the millions of galaxies in the nearby universe," said Dr.
Michael Skrutskie, principal investigator for the Two Micron All-Sky
Survey. Skrutskie, with the University of Virginia, Charlottesville,
was formerly with the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
"This survey will change the way astronomy is conducted and the types
of experiments that can be carried out, because astronomers can now
sit at their desk and have data for any spot on the sky literally at
their fingertips without going to a telescope," said Dr. Roc Cutri,
the survey's project scientist at the Infrared Processing and Analysis
Center of the California Institute of Technology and NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "It also makes astronomy more
open to the public, providing beautiful pictures and serving as a
powerful educational tool."
The survey was conducted at infrared wavelengths, which are longer
than the red light our eyes can see. Infrared wavelengths penetrate
dust better than visible light, making them an effective tool for
detecting dust-obscured objects both inside and outside of our Milky
Way.
"For the first time in history, we can, in effect, step outside our
galaxy and see it in detail, as it would appear from above," Skrutskie
said. "We can also see the texture in the distribution of galaxies
outside the Milky Way. Before this survey, astronomers tried to
connect the dots, but nearly one-third of the galaxies were obscured
by dust. Now, we can connect all the dots."
"The idea of a survey is an old human activity, but the Two Micron
All-Sky Survey has a modern twist," said Project Manager Rae Stiening
at the University of Massachusetts. "Just as English admiralty sent
Captain Cook and others to map the world, this new survey has mapped
the nearby universe."
The project used two dedicated 1.3-meter (51-inch) telescopes, one at
Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, Mount Hopkins, Ariz., the other at
the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Operations began
in Arizona in June 1997 and in Chile in March 1998. Since observations
concluded in February 2001, scientists have been processing and
validating data to complete the analysis of the entire sky. The atlas
was compiled from 120 million images containing 14 trillion pixels, or
data measurements. The survey produced catalogues brimming with
nearly half a billion objects.
The bonanza of astronomical discoveries already made by the survey
includes:
- Hundreds of brown dwarfs, or cool, failed stars; enabling scientists
to define new classes of stars
- Maps of the Milky Way's structure and dust distribution, and
large-scale structure in the nearby universe, inside and outside our
Milky Way
- Observations of galaxies hidden behind the disc of the Milky Way
- Details about the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the
Milky Way
- Numerous dust-obscured galaxies and quasars in the distant universe
- The largest database ever of location, brightness, color and
position of asteroids
For the next two years, scientists will conduct an extended Two Micron
All-Sky Survey mission, reviewing and delivering more content of the
raw data to the public. They will also process and release more
sensitive observations made during the survey, including images of the
entire Large and Small Magellanic clouds. "A lot of great stuff that
will be discovered with this survey hasn't been conceived of yet,"
Stiening said. "The best is yet to come."
By identifying interesting targets, finding stars for calibration and
providing data analysis techniques, the survey's data will be a boon
to future infrared space missions, including NASA's Space Infrared
Telescope Facility, scheduled for launch in April.
The Two Micron All-Sky Survey is a collaboration between the
University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis
Center. The Center developed the software system that converted the
nearly 25 terabytes of raw digital data into images and catalogues.
The University of Massachusetts was responsible for design,
construction and operation of the survey cameras and telescopes. The
project was first proposed in 1991 by Dr. Susan Kleinmann at the
University of Massachusetts, and the Center director at that time, Dr.
Charles Beichman. Previous infrared sky surveys by Caltech include
the first such survey, by Drs. Robert Leighton and Gerry Neugebauer,
and the first all-sky survey from space, by the Infrared Astronomical
Satellite. JPL is a division of Caltech.
The survey is primarily funded by NASA's Office of Space Science,
Washington, D.C., with additional funding provided by the National
Science Foundation.
Additional information about 2MASS is available at
http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass and
http://pegasus.astro.umass.edu/GradProg/2mass.html .
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