• California Nebula Stars in Final Mosaic by NASA’s Spitzer (JPL)

In our final story, we just have a pretty picture. At the beginning of February we shared with you that the Spitzer mission had been decommissioned on Jan 30. We also promised that science would still be coming from the mission’s data for years and decades to come. Today the good folks at JPL have released Spitzer’s final mosaic image. This image, of the California nebulae, reveals a beautiful spiral galaxy otherwise hidden by the light of the nebulae. It is only in the dust penetrating longer infrared wavelengths that Spitzer observed that we can see through the dust to the galaxy behind.