GLIMPSE360: Spitzer's Infrared Milky Way

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GLIMPSE360: Spitzer's Infrared Milky Way  

It is hard to comprehend the size our galaxy, but now Nasa has created an incredible panoramic view of the Milky Way that you can tour by clicking a button.

The star-studded panorama is made up of over two million infrared images taken over the last decade by the space agency’s Spitzer Space Telescope. 

This is our Milky Way galaxy as you’ve never seen it before. Ten years in the making, this is the clearest infrared panorama of our galactic home ever made, courtesy of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

GLIMPSE360: WorldWide Telescope Viewer, Zoom in and out, View in dark and daylight. http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/glimpse360/wwt

New 360-degree, 20-gigapixel mosaic view of the Milky Way can be seen in WorldWide Telescope http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/glimpse360

This video shows a continually looping view of the Spitzer Space Telescope's new infrared view of our Milky Way Galaxy. The 360-degree mosaic comes primarily from the GLIMPSE360 project, which stands for Galactic Legacy Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire. It consists of more than 2 million snapshots taken in infrared light over ten years, beginning in 2003 when Spitzer launched. 
The radar view to the bottom right of the screen shows the direction currently being displayed in the main image, centered on our position in the suburbs of the Milky Way. 
   

Lunar Double Rainbow!

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Lunar Double Rainbow!

An astounding natural phenomenon that you have probably never seen before:  a double lunar rainbow, or moonbow, arcs over the Pacific Ocean in this photograph by Dr. Dale Cruikshank. This amazing panorama was taken from Kaanapali, Maui at 9:30 PM on Feb. 26, 2013.

Rainbows form when water droplets refract sunlight into its component colors. The same principle applies to lunar rainbows , but instead of using direct sunlight, moonbows form when reflected sunlight from the moon is refracted by atmospheric moisture.

A moonbow is also known as a lunar rainbow, white rainbow, lunar bow, or space rainbow.

Moonbows are relatively faint, due to the smaller amount of light reflected from the surface of the moon. They are always in the opposite part of the sky from the moon.

Because the light is usually too faint to excite the cone color receptors in human eyes, it is difficult for the human eye to discern colors in a moonbow. As a result, they often appear to be white. However, the colors in a moonbow do appear in long exposure photographs.









Source:

NASA/Dale Cruikshank
Soderman/NLSI Staff
lunarscience.nasa.gov