Announcements

NASA Introduces New, Wider Set of Eyes on the Universe

Project News • February 18th, 2016

After years of preparatory studies, NASA is formally starting an astrophysics mission designed to help unlock the secrets of the universe -- the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).

Most Luminous Galaxy Is Ripping Itself Apart

Project News • January 15th, 2016

In a far-off galaxy, 12.4 billion light-years from Earth, a ravenous black hole is devouring galactic grub. Its feeding frenzy produces so much energy, it stirs up gas across its entire galaxy.

Teacher Program Brings NASA Research to Schools across America

Project News • January 6th, 2016

How many high school teachers and students can say they have presented their astronomy research alongside professional scientists at an international conference?

Galvanized by Genuine Research Experiences, NITARP Program Alumni Flock to International Astronomy Conference

Project News • January 6th, 2016

Look around at this year's winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Kissimmee, Florida and you're bound to run into a past, present or future participant in the NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP). For more than a decade now, the program has paired educators...

NEOWISE: A Yearlong Look at the Sky

Project News • January 15th, 2015

NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft discovered and characterized 40 near-Earth objects (NEOs) in the first year after the mission was re-started in December 2013. Eight of the discoveries have been classified as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs), based on...

NASA’s Kepler Marks 1,000th Exoplanet Discovery, Uncovers More Small Worlds in Habitable Zones

Project News • January 6th, 2015

How many stars like our sun host planets like our Earth? NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope continuously monitored more than 150,000 stars beyond our solar system, and to date has offered scientists an assortment of more than 4,000 candidate planets for further study -- the 1,000th of which was...

NEOWISE Spots a Comet That Looked Like an Asteroid

Project News • July 23rd, 2014

Comet C/2013 UQ4 (Catalina) has been observed by NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft just one day after passing through its closest approach to the sun. The comet glows brightly in infrared wavelengths, with a dust tail streaking more than 62,000...

Spring 2015 IPAC Visiting Graduate Student Fellowship

Community News • June 9th, 2014

The Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech announces the availability of six-month graduate student fellowships beginning in the Spring of 2015. The program is designed to allow students from other institutions to visit IPAC-Caltech and perform astronomical research in close...

NASA's WISE Findings Poke Hole in Black Hole 'Doughnut' Theory

Project News • May 22nd, 2014

A survey of more than 170,000 supermassive black holes, using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), has astronomers reexamining a decades-old theory about the varying appearances of these interstellar objects.

NASA's WISE Survey Finds Thousands of New Stars, But No 'Planet X'

Project News • March 7th, 2014

After searching hundreds of millions of objects across our sky, NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has turned up no evidence of the hypothesized celestial body in our solar system commonly dubbed "Planet X."