WISE satellite telescope

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Strange New Kind of Galaxy Spotted

Infrared survey uncovers 'menagerie of hidden objects'

(Newser) - After two years of scanning the night sky, NASA's WISE infrared telescope has spotted millions of supermassive black holes and a type of galaxy never seen before. The hot, dust-obscured galaxies—hot DOGs—are very rare. Each emits as much light as 100 trillion suns, hidden behind a vast...

NASA Thinks 4,700 Asteroids Threaten Earth

And twice as many as previously believed are in orbits similar to Earth's

(Newser) - NASA thinks it's got a pretty solid estimate on the number of gigantic asteroids that could plausibly cause regional or global catastrophe by smashing into Earth: 4,700, give or take 1,500. Included in that number are all the rocks that exist, or which they suspect exist, that...

Asteroid Has Been Following Us for Thousands of Years

So-called trojan asteroid discovered in Earth's orbit

(Newser) - It turns out that Earth has another neighbor besides the moon: a so-called Trojan asteroid that has been traveling with us around the sun for thousands of years, reports the Los Angeles Times . Plenty of other planets have their own asteroids—there are at least 4,000 in Jupiter's...

NASA Launches Telescope to Detect Space Threats

WISE infrared telescope will scan whole sky for hazardous objects

(Newser) - NASA today launched the first orbiting telescope since 1983 designed to search the entire sky for objects and phenomena invisible to conventional optics. Over the next nine months, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer will scan the whole sky one and a half times over looking for asteroids and comets that...

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