In the June issue of Prospect, Stephen Eales reported from inside command HQ on the nerve-wracking launch of two giant telescopes on the Ariane 5 space rocket. Stephen is leading two of the surveys that one of the telescopes, Herschel, is hoping to carry out. If successful, the mission could help solve some of the deepest questions about how stars and galaxies are formed, and why the universe expanded so rapidly after the first split second of the big bang.
He has been updating us on the progress of the Herschel project since its launch. This is his latest dispatch:
Launch+32 days: Tomorrow I am going to a Herschel meeting in Paris. The Herschel project has involved hundreds of meetings and probably thousands of telephone conference calls, many of which were a waste of time, but this time, with a working telescope in place, the meeting is going to be about serious practical matters: we are going to discuss the papers we will write when the first data starts to arrive. I said "working telescope," but there is one remaining obstacle. The lid still has to come off the telescope, which should be sometime in the next few days. Taking off what is effectively Herschel’s lens cap might seem a rather trivial business, but the lid can’t simply be thrown into space, because space missions now try to avoid litter, and the spring on the lid is rather floppy so as not to put too much stress on the telescope. A YouTube video, now viewed by 64,000 people (why?), of a test of the opening mechanism shows the lid gradually opening and then slowly moving back and almost closing before it finally opens again. Most unconvincing.
Launch+33 days: I checked my email just before my flight and the lid appears to have opened successfully. Or, at least, when the signal to release the lid was sent to the telescope the gyros on the telescope registered a small acceleration and the telescope of the temperature went down slightly. We’ll only know for sure that everything is working when we see something through the telescope.
Launch+34 days: We are sitting at a pavement café in Paris drinking beer after the first day of the meeting. A rumpled middle-aged man comes up to our table whom I only recognise as a French member of our team when he gives us an important piece of news. The team that built one of the other instruments have bypassed all the elaborate planned tests in order to try and get a quick picture to show at the Paris air show. Apparently the picture shows that the telescope is in focus and everything else is working well, although none of us will be able to see it until the air show on Friday.
Launch+38 days: I was supposed to be attending a meeting to discuss the Herschel outreach site, but I spent the day with my wife wandering around Cardiff Bay as payback for my trip to Paris. When I get back there are nine messages in my email stack telling me where to find the picture. The image (see above) is of the galaxy Messier 51, a spiral galaxy rather like our own. The blue in the picture shows emission from warm interstellar dust (although still at –200 centigrade) in regions in which stars are forming. The red in the picture shows much cooler dust. It may not be the most beautiful image in the world, but it will go down in history as the first light image from Herschel, and it shows we now do have a working telescope.
He has been updating us on the progress of the Herschel project since its launch. This is his latest dispatch:
Launch+32 days: Tomorrow I am going to a Herschel meeting in Paris. The Herschel project has involved hundreds of meetings and probably thousands of telephone conference calls, many of which were a waste of time, but this time, with a working telescope in place, the meeting is going to be about serious practical matters: we are going to discuss the papers we will write when the first data starts to arrive. I said "working telescope," but there is one remaining obstacle. The lid still has to come off the telescope, which should be sometime in the next few days. Taking off what is effectively Herschel’s lens cap might seem a rather trivial business, but the lid can’t simply be thrown into space, because space missions now try to avoid litter, and the spring on the lid is rather floppy so as not to put too much stress on the telescope. A YouTube video, now viewed by 64,000 people (why?), of a test of the opening mechanism shows the lid gradually opening and then slowly moving back and almost closing before it finally opens again. Most unconvincing.
Launch+33 days: I checked my email just before my flight and the lid appears to have opened successfully. Or, at least, when the signal to release the lid was sent to the telescope the gyros on the telescope registered a small acceleration and the telescope of the temperature went down slightly. We’ll only know for sure that everything is working when we see something through the telescope.
Launch+34 days: We are sitting at a pavement café in Paris drinking beer after the first day of the meeting. A rumpled middle-aged man comes up to our table whom I only recognise as a French member of our team when he gives us an important piece of news. The team that built one of the other instruments have bypassed all the elaborate planned tests in order to try and get a quick picture to show at the Paris air show. Apparently the picture shows that the telescope is in focus and everything else is working well, although none of us will be able to see it until the air show on Friday.
Launch+38 days: I was supposed to be attending a meeting to discuss the Herschel outreach site, but I spent the day with my wife wandering around Cardiff Bay as payback for my trip to Paris. When I get back there are nine messages in my email stack telling me where to find the picture. The image (see above) is of the galaxy Messier 51, a spiral galaxy rather like our own. The blue in the picture shows emission from warm interstellar dust (although still at –200 centigrade) in regions in which stars are forming. The red in the picture shows much cooler dust. It may not be the most beautiful image in the world, but it will go down in history as the first light image from Herschel, and it shows we now do have a working telescope.
