The Spitzer spacecraft was designed to take infrared pictures of the cosmos. From its launch in Aug 2003 until May 2009 it has manged to take some amazing pictures of the universe. To accompish this it use a coolant which kept the Telescope IR instruments at a chilly 30 degree Kelvin so that its own instruments would not interfere with the infrared rays it was detecting. The coolant has now been depleted and it has started taking “warm” pictures. Recently it has detected a ring around Saturn (for which we have an artist impression, no “real pictures”) which dwarfs all other rings.   The sheer size of the ring is stunning.

New Saturn Ring

But lets not forget some of the other images it has taken, I thought I’d dig one up, Here is Cygnus, the first images taken while the telescope was being recommissioned.

DR22, Cygnus, NGC 4145, NGC 4361