"[...] upcoming launch of the WISE mission, slated for December 7. [...] the mission, which is designed to scan the entire sky at infrared wavelengths, spotting perhaps hundreds of thousands of asteroids and studying a wide range of stars and galaxies. [...] After six months, the instrument will have observed the entire sky, producing nearly 1.5 million images and creating, ultimately, an atlas of the entire celestial sphere.
This is exciting stuff. For one thing, WISE should be able to measure the diameters of more than 100,000 asteroids. For another (and this may be of the most interest to Centauri Dreams readers), WISE will be able to detect stars much dimmer than the Sun. These brown dwarfs, many of which have yet to be discovered, should be readily apparent to the WISE instrument, and of course we hope for one that ranks as the closest star to the Earth. And beyond all this, WISE will be able to produce a global map of the galaxy and its associated dust."
Sobre o Kepler ver aqui.
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