NASA showed how the sky above the Earth has changed. Filming took 12 years

Every six months, NASA's Near-Earth Object Investigation, or NEOWISE, spacecraft

travels halfway around the Sun,taking pictures in all directions. Stitched together, they form a "whole sky" map that shows the location and brightness of hundreds of millions of objects.

This illustration shows the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft in Earth orbit.
Image Credit & Copyright: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Using 18 sky maps created by the cosmicship (the 19th and 20th will be released in March 2023), scientists created a time-lapse image of the sky. It shows the changes that have taken place over the last decade.

Each map is a huge resource for astronomers,but when viewed sequentially as a time-lapse, they serve even more usefully to better understand the Universe. Comparing maps helps detect distant objects that have changed position or brightness over time.

Wide-field Infrared Survey spacecraftExplorer (WISE) operates in Earth orbit. The WISE mission ended in 2011, but in 2013 the ship was repurposed to search for and study asteroids and other near-Earth objects (NEOs). The mission itself and the spacecraft were renamed NEOWISE.

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