NASA has created a stunning timelapse movie of the entire night sky captured over 12 years.
The clip was created using imagery from the NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer) space telescope.
Launched in 2009 under the previous name “WISE,” the orbiting probe was designed to study objects outside the Solar System.
Nasa said the timelapse demonstrated the power of the spacecraft’s infrared camera, which scans the sky every six months.
“Every six months, NEOWISE completes one trip halfway around the Sun, taking images in all directions.” the space agency said.
“Stitched together, those images form an ‘all-sky’ map showing the location and brightness of hundreds of millions of objects.
“Using 18 all-sky maps produced by the spacecraft, scientists have created what is essentially a time-lapse movie of the sky, revealing changes that span a decade.”
Within the image, infrared light from massive cosmic events appears as faint glows.
Distant galaxies and black holes, for instance, can be tracked as they grow and expand or fade into nothing as they die.
NEOWISE was designed to study objects outside of the Solar System such as stars and planets.
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It has since been repurposed to help scientists track near-Earth objects NEOs such as asteroids and comets.
Scientists track thousands of NEOs that could one day pose a threat to our planet.
NEOWISE helps with this by completing a trip halfway around the Sun once every six months.
As it moves, it takes images in all directions. Those can be stitched together to form the timelapse released this week.
“If you go outside and look at the night sky, it might seem like nothing ever changes, but that’s not the case,” said Amy Mainzer, principal investigator for NEOWISE.
“Stars are flaring and exploding,” she added. “Asteroids are whizzing by. Black holes are tearing stars apart. The universe is a really busy, active place.”
Astronomers use images from telescopes like NEOWISE to study how cosmic objects change over time.
NEOWISE and its predecessor have previously proven indispensable to recent studies of the universe.
In 2012, for instance, it exposed millions of supermassive blackholes in distant galaxies.
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Eight years later, NEOWISE was surveyed brown dwarfs – stunted stars that never accrued enough mass for nuclear fusion.
“We never anticipated that the spacecraft would be operating this long, and I don’t think we could have anticipated the science we’d be able to do with this much data,” said WISE project scientist and NASA astronomer Peter Eisenhardt.
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