Place: 4421 Sterling Hall, Coffee and cookies 3:30 PM Talk at 3:45 PM
Speaker: Ned Wright, UCLA
Abstract: WISE, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, surveyed the entire sky in 4 mid-infrared bands at 3.4, 4.6, 12 and 22 microns with vastly greater sensitivity than previous all-sky surveys at these wavelengths. WISE surveyed everything more than 1 AU from the Sun, including asteroids, comets, nearby brown dwarfs and star forming regions both in the Milky Way and in distant galaxies. The 12 and 22 micron channels were very powerful for detecting Ultra-Luminous Infrared Galaxies, and WISE has detected some of the most luminous galaxies in the Universe. The WISE short wavelength channels are very powerful for detecting old cold brown dwarfs, and WISE has detected objects as cool as 250 K, and the 3rd and 4th closest stellar systems to the Sun. WISE was launched 14 Dec 2009 and completed 4-band full sky coverage on 17 July 2010. "Warm WISE" ran with its 3.4 & 4.6 micron bands until 1 Feb 2011. "Warm WISE" was reactivated as NEOWISE-R to search for more Near Earth Objects, and has surveyed from 13 Dec 2013 to the present, but the decay of its orbit will shortly end its useful lifetime. Future space missions like NEOCam and the Origins Space Telescope can achieve orders of magnitude improvements in sensitivity over warm telescopes like HST, Herschel and WFIRST by using cold optics and modern detectors.<br>