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Posts tagged Herschel Space Observatory
Happy first birthday, Herschel and Planck!
May 14th
It's one year ago today that Herschel and Planck were propelled up into space to survey the Universe—the "cool" Universe, to be more specific—on behalf of humanity. (Of course, it wasn't William Herschel and Max Planck who were sent a million miles from the earth on top of a rocket, but rather the European Space Agency—ESA—satellites named after them.) ESA wishes them both a happy birthday on their website, and there are similar felicitations from the UK Herschel page, both with links to the exciting results and stunning images being released.
Meanwhile, we've been busy putting together the first results from HerMES, a major project on Herschel looking at star formation in hundreds of thousands of very distant galaxies. These were among the many results announced last week at an ESA conference in The Netherlands (which included a media event), and now the HerMES scientific papers are being made available to anyone who enjoys reading that kind of thing, and, indeed to anyone who doesn't. For mere mortals, though, the pretty pictures are on OSHI, the Online Showcase of Herschel Images and on the Herschel blog.
Initial results from Herschel
Dec 17th
A bigger venue now, for the first scientific results from the Herschel Space Observatory. Not sure how much I can reveal right now (the presentations will be uploaded after the conference, and I think they might be embargoed until then) but the photo above gives you the general idea. In the corner you can just about see the figure of Göran Pilbratt, the Herschel Project Scientist (who refused to stand still for the 8-second exposure), and on the screen he is dazzling us with an overview of the mission.
However, some results were revealed yesterday at a press briefing, and here they are...
Buenos días from Madrid!
Dec 14th
Day 1 of the Herschel Science Demonstration Phase Data Processing Workshop. Until Wednesday we will be based at ESAC, some 20 miles or so outside Madrid (map here). In the photo (click to enlarge) you can see ISO, Herschel's predecessor, at the left (well, a scale model of it!), and the ruins of a 15th Century castle at the right.
Today: update on the status of the mission, the instruments and the data processing software. This afternoon we'll be demonstrating the SPIRE photometry pipeline and I'll be rounding the day off with a brief demonstration of the point source extraction tool. If that made no sense to you, here's a layman's description: Herschel makes pictures of thousands of distant galaxies where each galaxy looks like a blob, and the tool automatically spots the blobs and measures how bright they are. And by spotting, counting and measuring blobs, we can learn about how stars formed in the early Universe. Exciting stuff!
Off to Madrid
Dec 12th
Just back from a week at RAL developing software related to the Herschel Space Observatory. I'll be off again tomorrow, this time to Madrid for a big Herschel conference hosted by ESA(C), where a bunch (a galaxy?) of astronomers will get together to share their brand-new expertise in analysing the brand-new Herschel data (from Monday-Wednesday) before the really exciting bit (Thursday and Friday), when the initial (tentative!) results from the science teams will be presented to the world.
I may post some updates during the week, and I'm sure there will be plenty on the Herschel blog, but for now here are a couple of pictures from a visit to Madrid last December, when I discovered the joys of photo stitching (with Hugin).
First, here's the Madrid Atocha railway station (spot the trains):
And here's the Puerto del Sol:
Six days and counting
May 8th
Herschel (on the left) and Planck (on the right) are scheduled for launch at 2.12pm UK time this coming Thursday...
Credit: ESA
At Sussex we're busy getting ready for data from both Herschel and Planck, but it'll be a few months before they reach that distant location known as L2, where they'll start their proper survey observations. So, in the meantime, here are some links...
- ESA launch page
- Another ESA launch page
- Watch the launch live on the Arianespace webcast page or on the ESA webcast page
Herschel Space Observatory
Oct 6th
PhD now submitted, I've just started a six-month contract working at Sussex on some software for the Herschel Space Observatory, which is due to be launched in 2009. Here it is:
Artist's impression of the Herschel Space Observatory
This week I'm at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Didcot, Oxfordshire, discussing the nitty-gritty of how the data processing system is going to operate. (Okay, other people are discussing the nitty-gritty, while I'm feeling pretty gormless...)
I live in York and I'm a research fellow in 
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