Spitzer: the first 30 months

Abstract

In his George Darwin Lecture, Michael Werner celebrates the achievements of the Spitzer SpaceTelescope, an observatory that owes much of its success to the fact that it is cool by design.1: This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Orion nebula, which is on the lower half of the image, surrounded by a ring of dust. Light with wavelengths of 8 and 5.8 µm (red and orange) comes mainly from dust heated by starlight. Light of 4.5 µm (green) shows hot gas and dust; and light of 3.6 µm (blue)…