The State Column

In the spirit of the holidays, NASA officials released its latest image from its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer telescope.

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Just in time for the holidays, NASA has released a new image from its WISE space telescope of a nebula that seems to resemble a wreath.

In a statement released by NASA on Sunday, space agency officials noted that the picture represented a new beginning, along with some holiday cheer.

“One might picture a wreath in these bright green and red dust clouds — a ring of evergreens donned with a festive red bow, a jaunty sprig of holly, and silver bells throughout. Interstellar clouds like these are stellar nurseries, places where baby stars are being born,” said NASA.

In explaining how the image appears to resemble a wreath, NASA officials explained that the green ring is the result of tiny particles of warm dust, whose composition is very similar to smog found on Earth. The red cloud in the middle is probably made of dust that is more metallic and cooler than the surrounding regions, said NASA scientists.

The image, which shows the nebula as it appeared 1,000 years ago, comes as NASA spent the holidays coordinating with Russian space agency officials in the latest launch to the International Space Station.

NASA astronaut Don Pettit, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers of the European Space Agency docked at the orbiting laboratory late Thursday, the latest transition to take place on the orbiting space station. The team at NASA’s mission control center in Houston, Texas, announced the arrival, inserting some holiday cheer as the ISS crew embarked on the latest mission in low-earth orbit.

WISE is a NASA-funded Explorer mission that is slated to provide a vast storehouse of knowledge about the solar system, the Milky Way, and the Universe. Among the objects WISE will study are asteroids, the coolest and dimmest stars, and the most luminous galaxies. WISE is an unmanned satellite carrying an infrared-sensitive telescope that will image the entire sky.

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