First All-Sky Infrared Maps | NASA's SPHEREx Space Observatory

First All-Sky Infrared Maps | NASA's SPHEREx Space Observatory

This figure features only the wavelengths emitted by the prominent red clouds of a type of cosmic dust known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and bubbles of hydrogen gas (blue). Both of these materials are a common ingredient in the formation of stars and planets.

This figure features wavelengths of light emitted by the millions of stars and galaxies SPHEREx can observe. The wavelengths emitted by the dust and hot gas are removed to make the stars and galaxies more visible.

NASA’s Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) observatory, the size of a compact car, utilizes a wide-field aluminum telescope. It recently completed its first infrared map of the entire sky in 102 colors using observations made between May and December 2025. A small selection of the 102 infrared colors the observatory can detect are featured in all-sky mosaics shown here.

Infrared colors are invisible to the human eye but are represented here in visible colors. The first image is dominated by infrared colors emitted by hot hydrogen gas (blue), and cosmic dust (red), but the image also includes infrared colors selected to highlight the presence of stars (blue, green, and white). The bright feature running through the middle of the images is the Milky Way galaxy, lit up by the billions of stars it contains. Most of the points of light above and below it are other galaxies.

In order to make the file sizes smaller, the spatial resolution of these images has been reduced to 0.1% of the full-resolution SPHEREx data images.

SPHEREx is NASA’s newest space telescope that “will observe hundreds of millions of galaxies and other objects during its two-year mission, mapping the cosmos in wavelengths invisible to the human eye”.

The SPHEREx mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the agency’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace) built the telescope and the spacecraft bus. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data is being conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions in the U.S., two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. Data is processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech. The mission’s principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available at the NASA-IPAC Infrared Science Archive. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more about SPHEREx, visit: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/spherex/

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Release Date: Dec. 18, 2025

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