May 27 2004
From The Space Library
NASA announced that the Spitzer Space Telescope (SST), launched on 25 August 2003, had made several new discoveries. The SST ~ formerly called the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, or SIRTF ~ was the largest infrared telescope ever launched. Among the SST's specific findings was the discovery of nearly 300 new stars in RCW 49, a region in the constellation Centaurus, 13,700 light-years from Earth. In addition, the SST had revealed high quantities of icy organic materials in planets forming around young stars in the constellation Taurus, located 420 light-years from Earth. The presence of organic materials in the newly forming planets could explain the origins of similarly icy bodies, such as comets. Scientists theorized that comets might have provided the water and other organic materials that enabled life to form on Earth. (NASA, “Raw Ingredients for Life Detected in Planetary Construction Zones,” news release 04-167, 27 May 2004; Warren E. Leary, “NASA Spots New Youngest Planet, Just a Million Years Old,” New York Times, 28 May 2004; NASA JPL, “About Spitzer,” http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/about/index.shtml (accessed 31 March 2009).
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