Science1 hOctober 7, 2026, 01:41

NASA's Decade-Old Infrared Survey Just Yielded First Milky Way Water Ice Map

Astronomers have produced the first galaxy-scale map of water ice using archival ALLWISE and 2MASS photometry instead of costly spectroscopy. The map covers 618,000 tracer stars, five major molecular cloud complexes and 39 named icy regions at roughly 7-arcminute resolution.

Tech Times

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Map built from 618,000 tracer stars in the ALLWISE and 2MASS catalogs
Method detects the 3-micron ice absorption feature in the W1 infrared band
Covers Taurus, Orion, Cygnus, Serpens, Ophiuchus and Vela complexes
Validated against 70 stars with spectroscopic ice data, correlation 0.88

#NASA

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NASA's Decade-Old Infrared Survey Just Yielded First Milky Way Water Ice Map

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MEGATRON Simulations Link First Stars to Chemical Fingerprints in the Milky Way

Chandra X-ray Observatory Reveals New View of Milky Way's Core

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