Failed stars focus of new NASA project

Jim Erickson, Rocky Mountain News

Saturday, October 14, 2006

NASA on Friday approved the construction of a $300 million, Earth-orbiting telescope that will scan the skies for failed stars called brown dwarfs, along with other celestial eccentrics.

Boulder's Ball Aerospace & Technologies will build the spacecraft that carries the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer telescope, known as WISE. Scheduled for launch into Earth's orbit in late 2009, WISE will spend seven months combing the cosmos at infrared wavelengths.

A prime target will be nearby brown dwarfs, starlike objects too small to ignite the nuclear fires that light up full-fledged stars. Though extremely faint at visible-light wavelengths, brown dwarfs emit a warm infrared glow that WISE should be able to see.

Recent studies suggest that planets might orbit some of these failed stars, so nearby brown dwarfs could be ideal targets for future planet-hunting missions.

"Brown dwarfs are lurking all around us," said Peter Eisenhardt, project scientist for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"We believe there are more brown dwarfs than stars in the nearby universe, but we haven't found many of them because they are too faint in visible light," Eisenhardt said in a NASA statement issued late Friday.

WISE might also spy the brightest galaxies in the universe, some so far away that their light has taken 11.5 billion years to reach Earth. Dust shrouds these distant galaxies and blocks much of their light, but that dust glows at infrared wavelengths.

The heat-sensitive WISE telescope will be designed and built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah.