NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NASA hosted a news teleconference at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT), Wednesday, Aug. 29, to announce new discoveries from its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The discoveries are related to the distant universe, including supermassive black holes and rare galaxies.

Participants

Daniel Stern, NuSTAR project scientist, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Peter Eisenhardt, WISE project scientist, JPL

Jingwen Wu, astronomer, JPL

Rachel Somerville, astrophysics professor, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.

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Stern - 1

The entire sky as mapped by WISE at infrared wavelengths is shown here, with an artist's concept.
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Stern - 2

With its all-sky infrared survey, NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has identified millions of quasar candidates.
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Stern - 3

Artist's concept of a dusty torus, or donut, of accreting material fueling a quasar. A quasar is an active supermassive black hole.
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Stern - 4

This zoomed-in view of a portion of the all-sky survey from WISE shows a collection of quasar candidates.
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Eisenhardt - 1

WISE has identified about 1,000 extremely obscured objects over the sky, as marked by the magenta symbols.
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Eisenhardt - 2

This image zooms in on the region around the first "hot DOG" (red object in magenta circle), discovered by WISE.
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Eisenhardt -3

This image is a portion of the all-sky survey from WISE. It highlights the first of about 1,000 "hot DOGs" found by the mission (magenta circle).
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Wu - 1

This plot illustrates the new population of "hot DOGs," or hot dust-obscured objects, found by WISE.
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Somerville - 1

WISE images of our neighboring spiral galaxy, Andromeda (left) and the central region of a nearby cluster of elliptical galaxies, the Fornax cluster (right).
› Fornax galaxy cluster
› Andromeda galaxy

Somerville - 2

This simulation, which represents a few billion years of evolution, shows two disk galaxies interacting in a graceful gravitational dance.
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