You might not believe the idea that if you fire infrared light into space, it manages to make things at least temporarily visible that weren’t before.  Thus, a three hundred and twenty million dollar infrared camera is going into orbit to get infrared pictures of celestial neighbors we didn’t even really know we had.

I know, it’s a freaky concept, but it makes sense in a way.  See, most telescopes have to use visible light in order to find things.  All that great stuff the Hubble sent back, for example?  All represented by visible light.  With an infrared system in place, we’ll be able to see things WITHOUT visible light.  Stuff like asteroids, brown dwarf stars, and possibly a whole new planet lurking on the outer edges of the solar system.

And to prevent false positives from the camera’s own internal systems, they’re all packed inside liquid nitrogen packs.

It’s a really awesome idea, and it launches today!  So hopefully we’ll get a whole slew of new pictures from this incredible new product.

Related posts:

1. Compact Infrared ALS-20M Illuminator Released
2. Infrared Flashlight Captures Videos As Well
3. Testo 881 Handheld Infrared Camera System
4. 16-Megapixel Infrared Sensor Will Watch You When You’re Not Looking
5. Pictures From Space–The Giant Space Dragon