The Universe in the Infrared: Spitzer’s Final Voyage

The infrared lies beyond the red end of the visible spectrum of light. Cool and dusty things throughout the Universe appear bright in infrared. The Spitzer Space Telescope is one of NASA’s Great Observatories, designed to observe the universe in infrared light. It was launched in 2003 with an expected lifetime of 5 years. Spitzer has succeeded beyond our wildest expectations, observing things from dust in our Solar System out to dusty galaxies at the edge of the Universe. On January 30, 2020, Spitzer will complete its mission. Dr. Rebull will summarize some of the interesting engineering that made this mission so successful, and cover several scientific highlights from the past 16 years of Spitzer operations.

Speaker: Luisa Rebull, Research Scientist, Caltech/IPAC