Nasa's spitzer finds first objects burned furiously - Wire Mesh Products - Wire Storage Cage

Now, Spitzer is in the extended phase of itsmission, during which it performs more in-depth studies on specificpatches of the sky. Kashlinsky and his colleagues used Spitzer tolook at two patches of sky for more than 400 hours each. The team then carefully subtracted all the known stars and galaxiesin the images. Rather than being left with a black, empty patch ofsky, they found faint patterns of light with several telltalecharacteristics of the cosmic infrared background.

The lumps in thepattern observed are consistent with the way the very distantobjects are thought to be clustered together. Kashlinsky likens the observations to looking for Fourth of Julyfireworks in New York City from Los Angeles. First, you would haveto remove all the foreground lights between the two cities, as wellas the blazing lights of New York City itself. You ultimately wouldbe left with a fuzzy map of how the fireworks are distributed, butthey would still be too distant to make out individually. "We can gather clues from the light of the universe's firstfireworks," said Kashlinsky.

"This is teaching us thatthe sources, or the "sparks," are intensely burning theirnuclear fuel." The universe formed roughly 13.7 billion years ago in a fiery,explosive Big Bang. With time, it cooled and, by around 500 millionyears later, the first stars, galaxies and black holes began totake shape. Astronomers say some of that "first light"might have traveled billions of years to reach the Spitzer SpaceTelescope. The light would have originated at visible or evenultraviolet wavelengths and then, because of the expansion of theuniverse, stretched out to the longer, infrared wavelengthsobserved by Spitzer. The new study improves on previous observations by measuring thiscosmic infrared background out to scales equivalent to two fullmoons -- significantly larger than what was detected before.Imagine trying to find a pattern in the noise in an old-fashionedtelevision set by looking at just a small piece of the screen.

Itwould be hard to know for certain if a suspected pattern was real.By observing a larger section of the screen, you would be able toresolve both small- and large-scale patterns, further confirmingyour initial suspicion. Likewise, astronomers using Spitzer have increased the amount ofsky examined to obtain more definitive evidence of the cosmicinfrared background. The researchers plan to explore more patchesof sky in the future to gather more clues hidden in the light ofthis ancient era. "This is one of the reasons we are building the James WebbSpace Telescope," said Glenn Wahlgren, Spitzer programscientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

"Spitzer isgiving us tantalizing clues, but James Webb will tell us whatreally lies at the era where stars first ignited." Other authors are Richard Arendt of Goddard and the University ofMaryland in Baltimore County; Matt Ashby and Giovanni Fazio of theHarvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.;and John Mather and Harvey Moseley of Goddard. Fazio led theinitial observations of these sky fields. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages theSpitzer Space Telescope mission for the agency's Science MissionDirectorate in Washington. Science operations are conducted at theSpitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology inPasadena.

Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housedat the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltechmanages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit: www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

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