The Spitzer Space Telescope before launch at Lockheed Martin.

Rather than orbiting the Earth, the Spitzer Space Telescope orbits the Sun, trailing behind the Earth. This artist concept depicts its orbit.

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Spitzer seen against the infrared sky. The band of light is the glowing dust emission from the Milky Way galaxy seen at 100 microns (as seen by the IRAS/COBE missions).The Spitzer solar panels also double as a solar shield that always faces the Sun, protecting the cold observatory from the Sun's heat.

This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the scattered remains of an exploded star named Cassiopeia A. Spitzer's infrared detectors "picked" through these remains and found that much of the star's original layering had been preserved. In this false-color image, the faint, blue glow surrounding the dead star is material that was energized by a shock wave, called the forward shock, which was created when the star blew up. The forward shock is now located at the outer edge of the blue glow. Stars are also seen in blue. Green, yellow and red primarily represent material that was ejected in the explosion and heated by a slower shock wave, called the reverse shock wave. The picture was taken by Spitzer's infrared array camera and is a composite of 3.6-micron light (blue); 4.5-micron light (green); and 8.0-micron light (red).

The Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, Calif.

An aerial photograph of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The Spitzer Space Telescope before launch at Lockheed Martin.

This is one segment of an infrared portrait of dust and stars radiating in the inner Milky Way. More than 800,000 frames from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope were stitched together to create the full image, capturing more than 50 percent of our entire galaxy. As inhabitants of a flat galactic disk, Earth and its solar system have an edge-on view of their host galaxy, like looking at a glass dish from its edge. From our perspective, most of the galaxy is condensed into a blurry narrow band of light that stretches completely around the sky, also known as the galactic plane. This segment extends through the constellations Aquila and Scutum. The bright area in the left half of the image corresponds to the direction of the end of the Milky Way bar and may be in part associated with that region of the inner galaxy; in visible light it is extremely dark due to dust. The swaths of green represent organic molecules, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are illuminated by light from nearby star formation, while the thermal emission, or heat, from warm dust is rendered in red. Star-forming regions appear as swirls of red and yellow, where the warm dust overlaps with the glowing organic molecules. The blue specks sprinkled throughout the photograph are Milky Way stars. This survey segment spans galactic longitudes of 24.8 to 33.0 degrees and is centered at a galactic latitude of 0 degrees. It covers about two vertical degrees of the galactic plane. This is a three-color composite that shows infrared observations from two Spitzer instruments. Blue represents 3.6-micron light and green shows light of 8 microns, both captured by Spitzer's infrared array camera. Red is 24-micron light detected by Spitzer's multiband imaging photometer. This combines observations from the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire (GLIMPSE) and MIPSGAL projects.

The Spitzer Space Telescope before launch at Lockheed Martin.

This is one segment of an infrared portrait of dust and stars radiating in the inner Milky Way. More than 800,000 frames from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope were stitched together to create the full image, capturing more than 50 percent of our entire galaxy. As inhabitants of a flat galactic disk, Earth and its solar system have an edge-on view of their host galaxy, like looking at a glass dish from its edge. From our perspective, most of the galaxy is condensed into a blurry narrow band of light that stretches completely around the sky, also known as the galactic plane. This segment extends through the constellations Norma and Circinus. The flat band of green running through this region is mostly dust in the distant disk of the Milky Way galaxy. The drop-off of star formation at the left edge of the image corresponds to our sightline along the outer boundary of the Norma spiral arm. In visible light the foreground dust renders this area nearly featureless and dark with only a scattering of nearby stars. The swaths of green represent organic molecules, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are illuminated by light from nearby star formation, while the thermal emission, or heat, from warm dust is rendered in red. Star-forming regions appear as swirls of red and yellow, where the warm dust overlaps with the glowing organic molecules. The blue specks sprinkled throughout the photograph are Milky Way stars. This survey segment spans galactic longitudes of 318.7 to 327.0 degrees and is centered at a galactic latitude of 0 degrees. It covers about two vertical degrees of the galactic plane. This is a three-color composite that shows infrared observations from two Spitzer instruments. Blue represents 3.6-micron light and green shows light of 8 microns, both captured by Spitzer's infrared array camera. Red is 24-micron light detected by Spitzer's multiband imaging photometer. This combines observations from the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire (GLIMPSE) and MIPSGAL projects.

This is one segment of an infrared portrait of dust and stars radiating in the inner Milky Way. More than 800,000 frames from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope were stitched together to create the full image, capturing more than 50 percent of our entire galaxy. As inhabitants of a flat galactic disk, Earth and its solar system have an edge-on view of their host galaxy, like looking at a glass dish from its edge. From our perspective, most of the galaxy is condensed into a blurry narrow band of light that stretches completely around the sky, also known as the galactic plane. This segment is in the constellation Aquila and shows a relatively sparse region of the Milky Way disk. The large star-forming region on the left edge is completely obscured behind dust in visible light. The swaths of green represent organic molecules, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are illuminated by light from nearby star formation, while the thermal emission, or heat, from warm dust is rendered in red. Star-forming regions appear as swirls of red and yellow, where the warm dust overlaps with the glowing organic molecules. The blue specks sprinkled throughout the photograph are Milky Way stars. This survey segment spans galactic longitudes of 41.3 to 49.5 degrees and is centered at a galactic latitude of 0 degrees. It covers about two vertical degrees of the galactic plane. This is a three-color composite that shows infrared observations from two Spitzer instruments. Blue represents 3.6-micron light and green shows light of 8 microns, both captured by Spitzer's infrared array camera. Red is 24-micron light detected by Spitzer's multiband imaging photometer. This combines observations from the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire (GLIMPSE) and MIPSGAL projects.

Artist concept of the Spitzer Space Telescope

The Spitzer Space Telescope before launch at Lockheed Martin.

The Spitzer Space Telescope seen against the infrared sky. The band of light is the glowing dust emission from the Milky Way galaxy seen at 100 microns (as seen by the IRAS/COBE missions).Spitzer looks towards the Rho Ophiuchi star-formation region looming just above the disk of the Milky Way.

The Spitzer Space Telescope before launch at Lockheed Martin.

The Spitzer Space Telescope before launch at Lockheed Martin.

This artist's concept illustrates a comet being torn to shreds around a dead star, or white dwarf, called G29-38. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope observed a cloud of dust around this white dwarf that may have been generated from this type of comet disruption. The findings suggest that a host of other comet survivors may still orbit in this long-dead solar system. The white dwarf G29-38 began life as a star that was about three times as massive as our sun. Its death involved the same steps that the sun will ultimately undergo billions of years from now. According to theory, the G29-38 star became brighter and brighter as it aged, until it bloated up into a dying star called a red giant. This red giant was large enough to engulf and evaporate any terrestrial planets like Earth that happened to be in its way. Later, the red giant shed its outer atmosphere, leaving behind a shrunken skeleton of star, called a white dwarf. If the star did host a planetary system, outer planets akin to Jupiter and Neptune and a remote ring of icy comets would remain. The Spitzer observations provide observational evidence for this orbiting outpost of comet survivors. Astronomers speculate that one such comet was knocked into the inner regions of G29-38, possibly by an outer planet. As the comet approached very close to the white dwarf, it may have been torn apart by the star's tidal forces. Eventually, all that would be left of the comet is a disk of dust. This illustration shows a comet in the process of being pulverized: part of it still exists as a chain of small clumps, while the rest has already spread out into a dusty disk. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke apart in a similar fashion when it plunged into Jupiter in 1994.