The Spitzer Space Telescope (formerly SIRTF, the Space Infrared Telescope Facility) was launched into space by a Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida on 25 August 2003. Spitzer's "life" history has not been smooth from the beginning. As someone said there were highlights and lowlights. For more than 30 years prior to its successful launch in 2003, there were discussions related to the creation of the project in 1983, many analyses within NASA and the scientific community, obstacles of political and managerial character, budget problems.

At last Spitzer was launched and its true mission began. Spitzer is composed of a 0.85-meter telescope and three cryogenically-cooled science instruments capable to perform imaging and spectroscopy in the wavelengths of 3 and 180 microns (1 micron is one-millionth of a meter). Spitzer primary and secondary mirrors, and the supporting structures, are produced almost entirely of lightweight beryllium which has excellent optical, thermal, structural, and mass properties. The total mass of the Spitzer telescope is less than 50 kg. The beryllium telescope assembly is not subject to the complications of thermal expansion variations, and has extremely good dimensional stability.

Thus Spitzer obtains images and spectra by detecting the infrared energy, or heat, radiated by objects in space. It is crucial because most of this infrared radiation is blocked by the Earth's atmosphere and cannot be observed from the ground.

So this sophisticated instrument makes very sensitive observations for us and it is in fact the largest infrared telescope ever launched into space!
Spitzer project scientist, Dr. Michael Werner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California said:
"We had no idea when we designed Spitzer that it would make such a dramatic step in characterizing exoplanets..."

One of the most impressive discoveries that Spitzer makes is the direct detection of planets around other stars. It is able to detect light originating from planets orbiting within150 or even 500 light years away from us. Spitzer, a space-based infrared observatory has sensitive instruments that can look into regions of space remaining hidden for optical telescopes. Such special regions are filled with dust and gas clouds and through them we cannot see distant planets' light.

But Spitzer as being infrared can see newly formed or forming planetary systems and the centers of galaxies, giant molecular clouds or extrasolar planets. It can pick up important information about smaller stars, too dim to be seen and help astronomers to classify galaxies in a new, this time, infrared light.

We are familiar with the galaxy M81, located 12 million light years from Earth (Spitzer's image above) as we can observe it with a small telescope or even binoculars. And we know what we see.
But Spitzer can "see" much more than that. It "separates" various components of M81by taking images in different infrared colors. If you look at the image (above), you see Spitzer's job:
red is emission from warm dust surrounding very massive stars, green shows dust heated by nearby stars and blue traces the distribution of stars in the galaxy.

In 2005 Spitzer helped to find what may be planets-in-the-making located around a brown dwarf called Cha 110913-773444, a little one, that itself is eight times the mass of Jupiter, it is even smaller than several planets around other stars! Using the Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have for the first time discovered what the atmosphere is like on planets outside our solar system.

In 2006 NASA's Spitzer identified two huge "hypergiant" stars circled by gigantic disks of what might be planet-forming dust.

Spitzer gives us an opportunity to study directly the characteristics of distant planets orbiting their stars. The measurements and images delivered by Spitzer during its lifetime will make analysis of the properties of distant objects much easier.

This is exactly yesterday's (April 16, 2007) position of Spitzer.
You can locate our wandering infrared observatory and see what Spitzer is doing at the moment, check its current orientation as seen from Earth, and where Spitzer is relative to the Earth. The picture is updated every 5 minutes! You can also read about current observation details here