NASA Releases Data From Its Sky-Mapping Telescope
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The first batch of data from a NASA mission to map the entire sky has been released to scientists and anyone with access to the Internet.
The celestial catalog made public this week includes millions of galaxies, stars, asteroids and other objects.
Many have been previously observed, but there are some new discoveries, including more than 33,000 new asteroids and 20 comets.
The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, was launched in 2009 to scan the whole sky in greater detail than previous missions. It went into hibernation earlier this year after
mapping the sky 1½ times.
The online collection represents only a portion of the all-sky survey. The full data is scheduled to be released next spring.
The project is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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