Nasa have launched a spectacular window on the universe that anyone can peer through.
A click of the mouse will show space fans millions of stars, galaxies gas clouds and other exotic cosmic objects.
The celestial gallery, including countless new discoveries, was produced by a heat-seeking space telescope called WISE, launched in December 2009.
Over 14 months it has scanned the whole sky with infared eyes, checking out its hot and cold spots in greater detail than any other mission.
WISE, which is short for Wide-field Infared Survey Explorer, snapped more than 2.5 million pictures from an orbit that carried it sweeping above Earth’s north and south poles.
Its bold voyage found more than 33,000 new asteroids plus 20 comets and it spotted distant objects that had previously been invisible to other telescopes before it ran out of vital coolant in October.
NASA has just released more than than half the data so anyone with a computer can zoom in for a detailed view of the heavens. More images will follow.
by David Livingstone
