Blogging holiday July 5, 2010
Posted by sarah in: new astronomy . Add a comment
Bit of a holiday, back in a few weeks. Meanwhile, enjoy the first all-sky map released from cosmic microwave background satellite Planck!
APOD: Cold dust, Hot image March 22, 2010
Posted by sarah in: astronomy, pics . 1 comment so far
Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day is this stunning image of a section of the Galaxy as seen at far-infrared wavelengths. The high-resolution parts come from the recently launched Planck satellite, the rest from the older infrared satellite IRAS. The bright material shown in the image is very cold gas and dust, whose radiation peaks at these long infrared wavelengths.
Image: ESA, Planck HFI Consortium, IRAS
First light for Planck September 18, 2009
Posted by sarah in: new astronomy, science . Add a comment
First images from Planck, overlaid on an optical image of the galactic plane
The European Space Agency yesterday released first light images from its cosmic microwave background experiment, Planck. Planck was launched together with infrared observatory Herschel in May, and these first data show that the little satellite is in excellent working order.
First light for Herschel June 21, 2009
Posted by sarah in: new astronomy, science, space . Add a comment
Doesn’t it seem like yesterday, that exciting day when two new astronomy satellites were blasted into space? There was Herschel, at 3.5-m the largest telescope ever launched into space, and Planck, the new cosmic miscrowave background explorer. We cheered, drank some champagne and settled into the wait until the data started coming in. Well, that day has arrived. This week ESA and the participating institutes released an early first light image from PACS, the Photodetector and Array Camera and Spectrometer, on board Herschel, taken during the telescope’s commissioning phase.
A big congrats to the Herschel telescope and instrument teams!
Update 11/07/09: Watch a video of the Herschel/PACS team as they receive the beautiful picture of M51 from the telescope, here. Great stuff!
Two more eyes in the sky May 16, 2009
Posted by sarah in: science, space . Add a comment
The launch went beautifully on Thursday, and soon astronomers will have two more eyes in the sky beaming down exciting new data. Herschel and Planck separated successfully from their ride, sent a signal back to mission control to confirm that all is well, and are now both under way to their dark orbits at L2.
The thing with launches is that there’s a lot of excitement and build-up, but when all goes well there’s really not much to say about it. They launched, yay! Now begins the important commissioning phase (planned to begin today for Herschel, on Monday for Planck), where all the functions of the telescope and the instruments, and their performance is checked out.
So here is a round-up of some media and bloggy coverage…
Big news stories from the BBC, Guardian, Volkskrant (in Dutch)
The official launch page at ESA has also been updated with latest news and some great videos and images.
Blog updates by Stuart, Andrew, Peter, Robert, Phil – for full astro-blog listings check out Spacebuzz for tags “Herschel” and “Planck”
News on the missions’ dedicated blogs (Herschel, Planck)
Image: ESA/S. Corvaja
