Broken NASA Satellite Used to Study the Stars
Posted on: Thursday, 8 January 2004, 06:00 CST
ATLANTA (AP) -- An infrared telescope satellite launched in 1999 failed a few days after it was launched, but astronomers have found a way to use a guiding device on the spacecraft to study the stars.
The Wide-Field Infrared Explorer, or WIRE, telescope stopped working early in its mission after it lost the coolant it needed to work as designed. But the craft remained in orbit and still had an operating two-inch telescope that was designed to point the instructions at target stars.
A team led by Derek Buzasi, a professor of physics at the U.S. Air Force Academy, developed a technique to use the telescope to measure the variations in brightness in stars, a job the WIRE spacecraft can do better than instruments on the ground because it is orbiting above the atmosphere.
The viewer on the WIRE has a two-inch lens, about the same as in a 35 mm camera.
In a study posted at the national meeting of the American Astronomical Society, the astronomers reported that data from WIRE shows that one of the brightest stars in the sky, called Altair, is actually an oscillator that varies in brightness by about 400 parts per million. The range of oscillation is undetectable by telescopes on the ground.
The study also determined that Altair is almost twice as big as the sun in both mass and diameter, and has an age of 630 million years.
"These findings allow us to test our understanding of how stars are built and how they evolve through time," Buzasi said in a statement. "It also shows that high-quality science can come from humble beginnings, such as a two-inch telescope."
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On the Net:
WIRE: The Wide Field Infrared Explorer
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