Orbiting space telescope maps the cosmos
A scientist who helped build a powerful space telescope at the Space Dynamics Lab remarked on the project’s impact in a speech at the Logan Tabernacle on March 9.
“Keep your chair backs in the upright position because we are ready to take off,” said Doug Thompson, former mayor of Logan, as he introduced John D. Elwell, the project manager for the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope.
Elwell explained the specifics of the WISE infrared telescope that he worked on at USU’s SDL in Logan. Elwell said it was launched at 6 a.m. on Dec. 14, 2009, and scientists received the first light image from it 15 days later.
Because of its wide-field capability, WISE covers more of the sky than any of its predecessors, including the Hubble telescope, he said, explaining that wide-field means the telescope takes broader pictures.
WISE completed its mission 13 months after its launch, having covered the sky completely two times, Elwell said. The telescope took about six months to complete each survey of the sky.
Elwell said WISE is basically a telescope with cameras, and “it has four cameras and each is pointing at the same target in space but with four different colors.”
Those colors combined create the infrared effect, Elwell said, adding that the telescope is special because of those infrared capabilities.
“WISE doesn’t look at visible light like our eyes (do), WISE looks at infrared light, or heat,” he said. “If you walk outside on a hot summer day and you feel the sunlight on your skin, your skin is actually protecting you from the infrared light.”
Elwell said also discussed some of the technical maintenance necessary to keep the telescope functional.
“We kept WISE cool the same way you keep a thermos cool on a hot summer day,” Elwell said. “Because infrared is heat, we have to keep the cameras cold. Otherwise, if the cameras were at say room temperature, the cameras would blind themselves with their own heat. It’s like going outside on a dark night and turning on the flashlight and shining it in your own eye.”
Elwell said the Space Dynamics Lab has been a part of USU for the past 50 years. With more than 500 successful missions originating from the SDL, the lab has become more well known, he said.
“We’ve had experiments that fly on satellites. We’ve had experiments on the space station and experiments on the International Space Station and a lot of work done on the space shuttle,” Elwell said. “If you add up 50 years of experiments at Utah State University from the Space Dynamics Lab, we’ve actually put more research expeditions in space than any other university in the world. And that’s not a bad record for a little university up in the mountains of northern Utah.”
The lab benefits students at USU who use it, he said. Successful projects like WISE improve researchers’ abilities to bring future work of this nature and therefore increase the opportunity to bring more students to the SDL for employment, which provides more exposure to the “real world” of engineering, he said.
“We have about 100 students that come down and work alongside with us,” Elwell said. “We are working to help develop the next generation of scientists and engineers for our country. “The difference in Space Dynamics Lab today is that we are respected around the world.”
Kyle Anderson, a student at USU, attended the speech with his wife. Anderson said his wife’s father works for the SDL and worked on the WISE project.
“I didn’t know anything about it, but it’s really interesting to see that this type of stuff is coming out of Utah State,” Anderson said. “I didn’t actually give it a lot of credit. They were just a bunch of nerds talking about space. But it really is pretty cool.”
Elwell said he was impressed by the amount of people in attendance at the speech.
“I hope that means the community is interested in and supports the work we do,” he said. “The WISE mission in particular – because of the spectacular images – has been an easy one to present to the community.”
In closing his speech, Elwell said the amount of the information collected by the WISE mission’s survey of the sky is so vast that it will take a long time to process it all.
“It will definitely be a resource in astrophysics for generations and decades to come,” he said.
– juliann13stock@aggiemail.usu.edu