Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a Spitzer Space Telescope image of Messier 42, The Great Nebula in Orion. Spitzer continues to operate, but because it ran out of helium coolant in 2009, the instrumentation is now restricted to two channels. The venerable instrument is scheduled to be retired in January of 2020. Too bad we don't have a space infrastructure to service such instruments!
How far we've come in looking at one of my favorite astronomical sights!
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