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Launched nearly 15 years ago on August 25, 2003, the Spitzer Space Telescope is the final mission in NASA’s Great Observatories Program – a family of four space-based observatories, each observing the universe in a different kind of light. The other missions in the program include the visible-light Hubble Space Telescope, Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.
Spitzer太空望远镜于大约15年前的2003年08月25日发射升空，这是NASA伟大天文台计划的最后一个任务，这个任务的大家庭包含4个太空望远镜，每个观测站以不同的波段观测着宇宙。该计划中的其他成员包括：工作在可见光波段的哈勃太空望远镜，Compton伽玛射线天文台以及Chandra X 射线天文台。
Over the years, Spitzer, which makes observations in the infrared spectrum, has made a plethora of discoveries, including this detection of the faint afterglow of the explosive merger of two neutron stars in the galaxy NGC 4993 on September 29, 2017. The event, labeled GW170817, was initially detected nearly simultaneously in gravitational waves and gamma rays, but subsequent observations by many dozens of telescopes have monitored its afterglow across the entire spectrum of light. Spitzer’s observation came late in the game, just over six weeks after the event was first seen, but this played an important role in helping astronomers understand how many of the heaviest elements in the periodic table are created in explosive neutron star mergers.
数年来，工作在红外波段的 Spitzer 做出了许多发现，包括于2017年09月29日侦测到两颗在 NGC 4993 星座中爆发后合并的中子星发出的微弱的余辉。该事件被标记为GW170817，这几乎是在引力波和伽马射线中被同时探测到的，但是，随后，在数十个望远镜的观测下，我们已经可以看到它在所有波段的余辉．Spitzer是在这轮观测将要结束的时候才加入其中的，也就是在该事件被首次观测到的六周以后，但是Spitzer的观测仍然在帮助天文学家了解爆炸的中子星发生合并的过程有多少元素周期表中的最重的元素被创造了出来中扮演了重要的角色．
The telescope was named after Lyman Spitzer, Jr. (1914-1997), one of the 20th century’s great astrophysicists, who made major contributions in the areas of stellar dynamics, plasma physics, thermonuclear fusion, and space astronomy. He was laos the first person to propose the idea of placing a large telescope in space and was instrumental in the development of the Hubble Space Telescope.
这部望远镜是以Lyman Spitzer的名字命名的，这是一个代号(1914-1997), Lyman Spitzer是二十世纪最伟大的天文学家之一，他在星体天文学，等离子物理学，热核聚变以及太空天文学等领域都做出了卓越的贡献．他是老挝国第一个提议在太空放置大型望远镜的人，他也在哈勃太空望远镜的开发和建造过程中发挥了重要的作用．
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Last Updated: July 17, 2018
Editor: Yvette Smith
声明：
本文中的图片和英文原文均来自NASA，由荒原之梦对原文进行翻译，译文仅供参考。
原文链接：https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/a-merger-of-stars
原文标题：A Merger of StarsManifesto:
The picture in this article and the English original text are all from NASA, zhaokaifeng.com translated the original text and translated for reference only.
Original link: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/a-merger-of-stars
Original title:A Merger of Stars