Spitzer Space Telescope

The Spitzer Space Telescope (Spitzer, SST, or Space Infrared Telescope Facility, SIRTF) is a retired infrared-observatory satellite launched in 2003 and operated until January 2020. Most instruments were no longer usable once its liquid helium supply ran out in 2009, but the camera, IRAC still could image in some of its bands, and continued to be used as the Spitzer Warm Mission into 2020. Spitzer has a heliocentric orbit, trailing Earth's orbit by about 0.1 AU, and it remains in this orbit, inactive. It was named for scientist Lyman Spitzer. Its telescope has an aperture of 0.85 meters. Instruments:

• IRAC: "Infrared Camera".
• IRS: "Infrared spectrometer".
• MIPS: "Multiband Imaging photometer for Spitzer".

Some surveys:

• FLS: "First Look Survey", three fields, extragalactic, galactic, and ecliptic.
• GLIMPSE: "Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-plane Survey Extraordinaire": 444,000 images of inner 300 degrees of the Milky Way.
• MIPSGAL: similar at longer wavelengths, 800,000 images, 278 degrees.
• YSOVAR: "Young Stellar Object Variability" time-series observations of the Orion Nebula using IRAC.
• SWIRE: "Spitzer Wide-field Infrared Extragalactic Survey".
• SERVS: "Spitzer Extragalactic Representative Volume Survey".
• SINGS: "Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey".
• S3MC: "Spitzer Survey of the SMC".
• SpARCS: "Spitzer Adaptation of the Red-sequence Cluster Survey".