Spitzer Space Telescope of the US Space Agency NASA has become a sort of zombie as it’s still ticking along in an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit, long after its intended demise.

To peep beyond the warmth of our enclosing galaxy in the freezing depths of intergalactic space, the telescope’s parts that observe and record are required to be kept quite cold. The infrared eyes of Spitzer can’t see past the interference of their own radiation if they get heat up more that about 4K.

The cryogenic capabilities of Spitzer, along with its liquid helium coolant and most of its functional bandwidth have expired in 2009. However the solar panels of zombie telescope are working. In space it’s quite cold in the absence of heat load from Earth. Thus, the telescope can still use the data from its infrared camera’s near IR channels for collecting and sending data in the form of photographs.

The University of Wyoming at Laramie team of astronomers has been researching on the deep skies with the help of the Spitzer archive and WISE infrared image archive of NASA, with a motive to find answers to questions regarding runaway stars such as Zeta Ophiuchi.

Astronomers presented their findings this week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. They presented: new and more remote runaway stars, identifiable by their telltale bow shock.

When something passes quite fast, it makes a sonic boom on Earth. A supersonic jet’s not gets warm because of piling up of matter in front of it: air gets out at a very fast pace to avoid being compressed, and then gets heat up by the compression. The sonic boom is defined as the pressure wavefront of all the air being compressed attempting to avoid coming in the way of the nose cone of that jet. It also glows in the infrared, but can’t be seen with the naked eye, and requires right kind of camera.