NASA WISE
WISE is a NASA-funded Explorer mission that provides a vast storehouse of knowledge about the solar system, the Milky Way, and the Universe. Among the objects WISE studies are asteroids, the coolest and dimmest stars, and the most luminous galaxies. This unmanned satellite carries an infrared-sensitive telescope that images the entire sky. As WISE sweeps along, a small mirror scans in the opposite direction, capturing an image of the sky onto an infrared sensitive digital camera which takes a picture every 11 seconds. Each picture has one megapixel at each of four different wavelengths that range from 5 to 35 times longer than the longest waves the human eye can see.
Data taken by WISE is downloaded by radio transmission 4 times per day to computers on the ground which combine the many images taken by WISE into an atlas covering the entire celestial sphere and a list of all the detected objects. This information is then released to the public to encourage analysis, leading to several significant discoveries. Access to WISE data products, including the Source Catalog and Image Atlas are available on the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) at http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/astronomers.html.
Site: http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/index.html
Podcasts, slideshows, and images: http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/gallery_images.html