PIA13290: Buckyballs Jiggle Like Jello (Artist Concept)
 Mission:  Spitzer Space Telescope
 Product Size:  1280 x 717 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  IPAC-Caltech
 Other  
Information: 
JPL News Release 2010-243
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA13290.tif (2.756 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA13290.jpg (36.54 kB)

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Original Caption Released with Image:

animation for PIA13290
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This artist's animation illustrates vibrating buckyballs -- spherical molecules of carbon discovered in space for the first time by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. These molecules jiggle, shimmy and shake in a variety of ways -- 174 to be exact. Four of these vibrational modes cause the molecules to either absorb or generate infrared light. Thanks to these jiggles, Spitzer's infrared vision was able to detect the long-sought signatures of buckyballs in space.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Image Addition Date:
2010-07-22