Great galaxy! Manchester College
scientist, student researchers
get 3-D look at Milky Way
with orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope
Manchester College physics and astronomy
teacher Dr. Christer Watson is curious just how thick the Milky Way is.
He’s focused on finding out … with eight other scientists who have
gained 250 hours of observation with NASA’s $733 million orbiting
Spitzer Space Telescope.
The team, headed by Dr.
Robert Benjamin at Watson’s alma mater, the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, will use a $736,000 grant for a 3-D infrared study of
the Milky Way. The project is the third and final of a series of GLIMPSE
(Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire).
Actually, the scientists
won’t be peering through the telescope … that’s orbiting in space on a
satellite. All of their work will be on computers, analyzing the data
the telescope sends back to Earth. The space-based Spitzer observatory
detects mid-infrared radiation (heat), which allows scientists like
Watson to “see” deep into the galaxy and determine the thickness of the
“It’s hard to determine
how our galaxy was formed when observing other galaxies,” explains
Watson, an assistant professor who lives in Fort Wayne, Ind. Knowing
the thickness will help scientists determine how our galaxy was formed.
on the GLIMPSE team also brings Manchester College a $10,000 grant to
give students at the North Manchester, Ind. campus a chance to research
real data from the project. Such an incredible opportunity could be the
inspiration for future scientists, notes Watson.
As Spitzer – launched
from Cape Canaveral in August 2003 – orbits the sun behind Earth, it
collects and sends digital data to a NASA lab in California. The GLIMPSE
team (with scientists from England and Belgium as well as the United
States) then records and analyzes the computer files. Watson’s job is to
set the coordinates for the telescope, which he’ll do from his computer
is all computer programming,” Watson says. “It’s all similar to using a
digital camera, taking a picture and loading it onto your computer.”
Well, it’s not quite that simple. The observation scientists first must
write a computer program so they can analyze the data.
Watson became involved
in GLIMPSE as a grad student at Wisconsin, helping design a way for the
telescope to take pictures of a large area of sky efficiently.
Originally, the telescope could only distinguish very dim objects, and
only after focusing on a small patch of sky for a long time.
The Spitzer Space
Telescope is the fourth and final element in NASA’s family of “Great
Observatories,” which includes the Hubble Space Telescope, the Compton
Gamma-Ray Observatory and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Learn more
about the Spitzer Space Telescope at
Learn more about GLIMPSE
One out of every 12
graduates of Manchester College has achieved a Ph.D. or professional
doctorate (M.D., D.O, D.V.M., D.D.S.) in the sciences. They chair
university science departments, direct research at major pharmaceutical
companies, have led the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, received the
Nobel Prize, and are responsible for more than 100 patents.
The College, with a new $17 million
Science Center on its northern Indiana campus, offers degrees in
biology, chemistry, biology-chemistry (pre-medicine), physics,
environmental science, mathematics, computer science and engineering
science. Learn more about science at Manchester at