This artist's animation shows a close-up view of a distant giant planet passing behind its star as a regular part of its orbit. By studying "secondary eclipses" like this in infrared light, astronomers can capture and study the direct light of known extrasolar planets. Though they cannot actually distinguish the planet from its star, they can detect changes in the system's total light. Why a secondary eclipse? When a planet transits, or passes in front of, its star, it partially blocks the light of the star. When the planet swings around behind the star, the star completely blocks its light. This drop in total light can be measured to determine the amount of light coming from just the planet, as demonstrated in the graph overlay. Why infrared? In visible light, the glare of a star overwhelms its planetary companion and the little light the planet reflects. In infrared, a star shines less brightly, and its planet gives off its own internal light, or heat radiation, making the planet easier to detect.

This artist's animation shows a close-up view of a distant giant planet passing behind its star as a regular part of its orbit. By studying "secondary eclipses" like this in infrared light, astronomers can capture and study the direct light of known extrasolar planets. Though they cannot actually distinguish the planet from its star, they can detect changes in the system's total light. Why a secondary eclipse? When a planet transits, or passes in front of, its star, it partially blocks the light of the star. When the planet swings around behind the star, the star completely blocks its light. This drop in total light can be measured to determine the amount of light coming from just the planet. Why infrared? In visible light, the glare of a star overwhelms its planetary companion and the little light the planet reflects. In infrared, a star shines less brightly, and its planet gives off its own internal light, or heat radiation, making the planet easier to detect.

This artist's animation shows first what a fiery hot star and its close-knit planetary companion might look like close up in visible light, then switches to infrared views. In visible light, a star shines brilliantly, overwhelming the little light that is reflected by its planet. In infrared, a star is less blinding, and its planet perks up with a fiery glow. Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope took advantage of this fact to directly capture the infrared light of two previously detected planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. Their findings revealed the temperatures and orbits of the planets. Upcoming Spitzer observations using a variety of infrared wavelengths may provide more information about the planets' winds and atmospheric compositions.

This artist's animation demonstrates that an invisible galaxy shrouded in dust can become glaringly bright when viewed in infrared light. The movie begins with a visible-light view, showing a dark blob of a galaxy that is so shrouded in dust it appears invisible. The picture then transitions to what the same region of space might look like in infrared light. A galaxy appears out of the darkness, because its heated dust glows at infrared wavelengths. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope uncovered a hidden population of invisible galaxies like these using its highly sensitive infrared eyes. The dusty galaxies are among the brightest in the universe and are located 11 billion light-years away, back to a time when the universe was 3 billion years old. The universe is currently believed to be 13.5 billion years old. Astronomers are not sure what is lighting up these cosmic behemoths, but they speculate that quasars -- the most luminous objects in the universe -- may be lurking inside.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope finds a delicate flower in the Ring Nebula, as shown in this animation. The outer shell of this planetary nebula looks surprisingly similar to the delicate petals of a camellia blossom. A planetary nebula is a shell of material ejected from a dying star. Located about 2,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Lyra, the Ring Nebula is also known as Messier Object 57 and NGC 6720. It is one of the best examples of a planetary nebula and a favorite target of amateur astronomers. The "ring" is a thick cylinder of glowing gas and dust around the doomed star. As the star begins to run out of fuel, its core becomes smaller and hotter, boiling off its outer layers.

This artist's animation shows a brown dwarf surrounded by a swirling disk of planet-building dust. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope spotted such a disc around a surprisingly low-mass brown dwarf, or "failed star." The brown dwarf, called OTS 44, is only 15 times the size of Jupiter, making it the smallest brown dwarf known to host a planet-forming, or protoplanetary disk. Astronomers believe that this unusual system will eventually spawn planets. If so, they speculate that OTS 44's disk has enough mass to make one small gas giant and a few Earth-sized rocky planets. OTS 44 is about 2 million years old. At this relatively young age, brown dwarfs are warm and appear reddish in color. With age, they grow cooler and darker.

This movie shifts from the well-known visible-light picture of the glowing Trifid Nebula to infrared views from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The Trifid Nebula is a giant star-forming cloud of gas and dust located 5,400 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. The false-color Spitzer images reveal a different side of the Trifid Nebula. Where dark lanes of dust are visible trisecting the nebula in the visible-light picture, bright regions of star-forming activity are seen in the Spitzer pictures. All together, Spitzer uncovered 30 massive embryonic stars and 120 smaller newborn stars throughout the Trifid Nebula, in both its dark lanes and luminous clouds. These stars are visible in all the Spitzer images, mainly as yellow or red spots. Embryonic stars are developing stars about to burst into existence.

This animation portrays an artist's concept of a distant hypothetical solar system, about the same age as our own. It begins close to the star, and then moves out past a number of planets. Though "extrasolar" planets are too small to be seen with telescopes, astronomers have detected more than 100 gas giants like Jupiter via their gravitational tug on their parent stars. The view pulls back to reveal the outer fringes of the system and a ring of dusty debris that circles the star. This debris is all that remains of the planet-forming disk from which the planets evolved.

This animation shows the evolution of a planet-forming disk around a star. Initially, the young disk is bright and thick with dust, but eventually gaps appear within the disk as newborn planets coalesce out of the dust, clearing out a path. After a few billion years, only a thin ring remains in the outermost reaches of the system.

In this animation, we observe what a young star with a circumstellar disc would look like when viewed from different angles.

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This animation depicts colliding rocky bodies in an early planetary system. Such collisions form the basis of the planet-building process. New findings from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show that these catastrophes continue to occur around stars even after they have developed full-sized planets, when they are as old as one hundred million years. For reference, our own Sun, at 4.5 billion years old, is far past this late stage of planet formation. In this movie, full-sized planets circle a central star. Collisions between outer rocky bodies are visible as bright flashes. The dust generated from these collisions can be seen spreading out to form a large ring of dust, or "debris disc," around the star. In time, this dust will settle and a mature planetary system will emerge. Spitzer was able to see the dust generated by these collisions with its powerful infrared vision.

This animation illustrates a massive collision between rocky, embryonic planets as big as mountain ranges. Such collisions form the basis of the planet-building process. New findings from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show that these catastrophes continue to occur around stars even after they have developed full-sized planets, when they are as old as one hundred million years. For reference, our own Sun, at 4.5 billion years old, is far past this late stage of planet formation. In this movie, the two embryonic planets are shown shattering into pieces.

This animation demonstrates the power of infrared light to see what visible light cannot -- a newfound bundle of stars called a globular cluster. The movie shifts from a visible-light image to a near-infrared image to a new mid-infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The visible-light image is from the California Institute of Technology's Digitized Sky Survey and the near-infrared image is from the NASA-funded Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS).

This animation transitions from the more familiar visible light image of the "Whirlpool Galaxy" to the dramatic new view captured by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Revealed are strange structures bridging the gaps between the dust-rich spiral arms, and tracing the dust, gas and stellar populations in both the bright spiral galaxy and its companion. The visible light image comes from the Kitt Peak National Observatory 2.1m telescope, and is a four-color composite showing light from 0.4 to 0.7 microns, including the H-alpha nebular feature (red in the image). The Spitzer image is a four-color composite of invisible light of wavelengths of 3.6 microns (blue), 4.5 microns (green), 5.8 microns (orange) and 8.0 microns (red). These wavelengths are roughly 10 times longer than those seen by the human eye.

The composite view of the supernova splits into its three components: blue-green for Chandra, yellow for Hubble, and red for Spitzer. Each observatory's full image is then shown for side-by-side comparison, beginning with Chandra, then Hubble, and finally Spitzer.

This animation of a supernova explosion demonstrates what happens when a massive star explodes and creates a shell of hot gas that glows brightly in X-rays. These X-rays reveal the dynamics of the explosion.

This "zoom" starts in the Scorpius constellation and pushes through deeper and narrower telescopic fields to at last reach Kepler's Supernova Remnant, a composite of images from NASA s Chandra X-Ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope.

This animation transitions from a visible light image of the planetary nebula called NGC 246 to Spitzer's new infrared view. The movie highlights Spitzer's ability to see the invisible; as the movie dissolves to the Spitzer image, a giant ring (red) emerges. This clumpy ring consists of material that was expelled from the aging star at the center of the nebula.

In this animation, the elliptical galaxy Centaurus A is seen through the eyes of three different telescopes. Initially, the movie zooms into a visible light picture showing how this galaxy is bisected by an unusual lane of dust, somewhat irregular in appearance. The view fades to reveal the false-colored, near-infrared view of this galaxy as seen by the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS). In these longer wavelengths of light, much of the dust has become transparent, allowing us to see more of the stars in the core of the galaxy. The Spitzer view is revealed next, showing the dramatic mid-infrared light view of the galaxy. At these longer wavelengths, the dust clouds now glow red, allowing us to see the structure of the dust throughout the galaxy more clearly than ever before. It is clear that the dust is not random or irregular, but lies in a geometrically symmetric distribution, marked by a particularly striking parallelogram in the inner reaches.

In a collaborative effort between NASA's three Great Observatories, astronomers have solved a cosmic mystery by identifying some of the oldest and most distant black holes. This animation fades between images taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope in the field known as the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey, or GOODS.

In a collaborative effort between NASA's three Great Observatories, astronomers have solved a cosmic mystery by identifying some of the oldest and most distant black holes. This animation fades between images taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope in the field known as the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey, or GOODS.

Observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveal hundreds of newly forming stars in the nebula RCW49, located 13,700 light-years from Earth. Operating at wavelengths of light longer than those seen by the human eye, Spitzer can clearly see these young stars, or "protostars," which are hidden from visible views in shrouds of dust.

Astronomers are using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to probe the structures of circumstellar disks, the dusty disks that surround young stars, to look for the earliest signs of the formation of planetary systems. Examining young stars in the constellation of Taurus known to have such disks, Spitzer's ultra-sensitive infrared spectrograph instrument has detected the clearest evidence to date that an inner gap has formed in the disk surrounding the star CoKu Tau 4. Such a gap could indicate the presence of a new planet that has formed from the missing material. This animation illustrates one possible scenario for the formation of an inner gap.

Observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveal hundreds of newly forming stars in the nebula RCW49, located 13,700 light-years from Earth. Operating at wavelengths of light longer than those seen by the human eye, Spitzer can clearly see these young stars, or "protostars," which are hidden from visible views in shrouds of dust. This animation shows what a human eye might see if it could be re-tuned to see different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. It shows RCW49 in shifting wavelengths of light, beginning with visible views and ending with Spitzer infrared observations.

Using the Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers are probing the chemistry of circumstellar disks, the dusty discs that surround stars, to understand the first moments in planetary life. Spitzer has turned its ultra-sensitive infrared spectrograph instrument toward five young stars in the constellation Taurus. In this animation, we focus on the disk of a young star. Light from the star is almost completely blocked by the thick dust and is seen only when it scatters off dust and gas above the disk plane. Delving in closer, we observe that the disk is composed of countless tiny grains of dust, some of which, according to Spitzer observations, have crystal structures. These dust grains may serve as the first building blocks of new planets, accreting into larger and larger bodies, as time progresses.

Observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveal a turbulent nest of giant newborn stars too shrouded in dust to be seen with visible light. This movie highlights this stellar nursery, called DR21, and illustrates what a human eye might see if it could be re-tuned to see different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. It shows the area surrounding DR21 in shifting wavelengths of light, beginning with the visible and ending with the new Spitzer infrared observations.

This animation shows the location of the newly discovered planet-like object, dubbed "Sedna," in relation to the rest of the Solar System. Starting at the inner Solar System, which includes the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars (all in yellow), the view pulls away through the asteroid belt and the orbits of the outer planets beyond (green). Pluto and the distant Kuiper Belt objects are seen next until finally Sedna comes into view.

This animation illustrates the process of triggered star formation. First, a massive star in its final death throes explodes or "goes supernova," shooting a shock wave through surrounding clouds of gas and dust. Next, the shock wave compresses the gas and dust, gravity kicks in, and finally, a new wave of stars is born. The whole progression, from the death of one star to the birth of others, takes millions of years to complete.

Starting with a wide view of the environment surrounding the Henize 206 star formation region, the animation moves in to the heart of the nebula.