Galactic Center: Infrared & Radio View | NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Galactic Center: Infrared & Radio View | NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Judy Schmidt: "The MeerKAT mosaic was released recently, giving me a chance to finally combine the Spitzer Space Telescope/Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) infrared mosaic with MeerKAT's radio data. MeerKAT data are overlaid in white." 

The Spitzer Space Telescope was an infrared space telescope launched in 2003. Operations ended oin January 2020. Spitzer was the third space telescope dedicated to infrared astronomy, following IRAS (1983) and ISO (1995–1998). It was the first spacecraft to use an Earth-trailing orbit, later used by the Kepler planet-finder.

Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is a NASA infrared astronomy space telescope in Explorer program. It was launched in December 2009, and placed in hibernation mode in February 2011, before being re-activated in 2013 and renamed the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE)

MeerKAT, originally the Karoo Array Telescope, is a radio telescope consisting of 64 antennas in the Meerkat National Park, in the Northern Cape of South Africa.

Technical details: 

Annotations from arxiv.org/abs/2201.10541

White overlay: SARAO/MeerKAT (1.28 GHz)

Red: Spitzer/MIPS1 (24μm)

Green: WISE/W3 (12μm)

Blue: Spitzer/IRAC4 (8μm)

North is NOT up. It is around 60° counter-clockwise from up.

Image Credit: JPL-Caltech/South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) 

Image Processing: Judy Schmidt

Release Date: January 31, 2022

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Science #MilkyWay #Galaxy #GalacticCenter #Cosmos #Universe #Spitzer #WISE #SpaceTelescope #Telescope #Infrared #JPL #Caltech #UnitedStates #RadioTelescope #SouthAfrica #MeerKAT #SARAO #JudySchmidt #STEM #Education