Infrared waves are about the length of a grain of sand.

Do you recognize the constellation Orion? If you could see Orion in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum, this is what you would see. Most of the stars you normally see in Orion don't stand out in this wavelength. One of the things you do see is a large bright ring-shaped feature, which is expanding debris from an exploding star. We normally experience infrared radiation as heat. The Spitzer Space Telescope was launched in August 2003. It is helping us learn much more about the infrared universe.