Three color mosaic of SPHEREx images from channels centered at 0.98 um (blue), 0.96 um (green) and 3.29 um (red). The green areas show ionization regions near a cluster of young stars in blue, traced ...

SPHEREx, NASA’s latest space observatory ... similar to how a prism splits sunlight into a rainbow. Each color tells a different story. For instance, this method helps determine how far away a galaxy ...

While other projects like COBE have previously mapped the whole sky, SPHEREx is the first to do it across so many color spectrums. Using spectroscopy, the observatory splits light across 102 ...

The molecules that composed the dust- polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons- do not radiate light in this color. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA’s SPHEREx space observatory, positioned in Earth orbit, scans ...

This image from NASA's SPHEREx shows the same region of space in a different infrared wavelength (0.98 microns), but the dust cloud is no longer visible. The molecules that compose the dust - ...

Each SPHEREx exposure consists of six images, one for each detector. To take these first images, members of the science team assigned a visible color to each infrared wavelength that the telescope ...

These sections are processed in grayscale rather than visible-light color for ease of viewing. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The SPHEREx observatory detects infrared light, which is invisible to the human ...

Unlike standard filters that block all wavelengths except one specific color, SPHEREx uses special "rainbow-tinted" filters where the wavelengths blocked change gradually from top to bottom, allowing ...

SPHEREx’s complete field of view spans the ... so each of the observatory’s six different sensors is given its own color. The data from each sensor can be further broken down in 17 unique ...

SPHEREx will begin routine science operations ... Each six-image exposure captures up to 102 shades, NASA said. The color differences allow scientists to study the composition of objects or ...