The European Space Agency is getting ready to loft the biggest mirror ever in a space telescope: the 3.5 meter giant for the Herschel Space Telescope. That’s big: Hubble’s is only 2.4 meters, so this one will have over twice the area of Hubble.
Incredibly, the whole mirror assembly — the big primary, a smaller secondary, and the support structure — will mass only 320 kilograms (700 pounds). That’s incredibly lightweight for such a large amount of hardware! I’m impressed.
The picture above shows this cool device (click here for a very embiggened picture). The telescope is optimized for far infrared light; meaning it will look at dusty disks around stars, planets and stars forming, ancient distant galaxies, and more. No space telescope has ever looked at just these wavelengths before, so this should provide an interesting view of the Universe. It’s supposed to launch late this year. I can’t wait!
February 9th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
OK, I’m not an astronomer, I’m not a physicist, I’m a chemist, but the way I’m getting this is that due to red shift things further away and also due to the speed of light further back in time are red shifted to longer wavelengths. So this telescope will let us see even further back in time than even Hubble has viewed.
I gotta say that is pretty sweet. I can’t wait until the images start rolling in.
At the same time it makes me angry that the ESA is doing this instead of NASA. It’s just one more case of the good science that could be done if NASA wasn’t being forced by an egomaniacal president to plant another flag on a dead ball of dust.
February 9th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
In addition I wonder if this telescope is going to be capable of detecting the hypothetical population III stars.
That would go a long way toward confirming many of the current models we have for the origin and evolution of the universe.
February 9th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Herschel Space Telescope? Why have I not heard about this before?
February 9th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Hey, Phil (or anyone else who might know), out of curiosity, how is a fragile item like that packaged to survive the violence of liftoff?
Just curious. Seems it would be a pretty neat engineering trick pulling that off.
Thanks.
February 9th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
eddie:
Liftoff is not really that violent, especially if they use a conventional “stacked” rocket with liquid boosters.
Besides, mirror is rigidly connected to the rest of the satellite – you don’t need fine and fragile actuators. Instead, the satellite itself changes attitude when the ’scope needs to be retargeted.
February 9th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
gopher65:
Herschel is a science story from Europe. Of course you won’t hear anything of it on US “news” programs.
Thanks, BA, for keeping us abreast of such astronomy developments.
Art (who has heard nothing of this either)
February 9th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
The mirror is made of silicon carbide, quite lightweight. Guess it’s not as good as glass, but since the telescope works in IR (longer wavelengths) the mirror doesn’t have to be that perfect.
February 9th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
IR wave lengths. Isn’t it short, not long?
February 9th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
>Herschel Space Telescope? Why have I not heard about this before?
Mostly because the US media tends to pretend that other countries don’t have space programs.
The ESA has a couple of upcoming cool missions: Rosetta is on its way to a comet – will orbit in 2014. Planck will launch this year to study cosmic background radiation. Gaia, the followup to Hipparcos, will launch in 2011. BepiColumbo – the Mercury mission will launch 2013.
COROT is a space telescope that is looking for exoplanets – its been in orbit for more than a year. There’s also Integral a combo X-ray/Gamma ray space telescope. Not to mention the XMM-Newton X-ray telescope, the venerable SOHO solar observatory and Ulysses solar probe.
There’s also the four Cluster spacecraft studying the Earth’s magnetosphere.
The Japanese have a lunar orbiter and the Hayabusa is limping back from an asteroid mission.
You’d be amazed what you’d learn when you’re not rotting your mind watching American Idol.
February 9th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
>At the same time it makes me angry that the ESA is doing this instead >of NASA. It’s just one more case of the good science that could be >done if NASA wasn’t being forced by an egomaniacal president to plant >another flag on a dead ball of dust.
I think your anger is quite misplaced – much as I cant stand Bush, any delays in JWST cannot be blamed on the Constellation program. IIRC many of the delays came before Constellation program was even thought of…JWST is a really complex mission. Give the choice of reducing the size of the scope and delaying the launch 2 years – I think it will be worth the wait.
Meanwhile we can cheer on our European colleagues…and enjoy a refurbished Hubble this summer!
February 9th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Kevin Conod:
a) I’m not American,
b) I don’t watch reality TV,
c) I’ve heard of those other spacecraft that you mentioned, just not Herschel or COROT. I was just thinking, they must not have publicized Herschel very well cause I haven’t seen anything about it on any of the sites I visit until now.
February 9th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Does anyone else notice those concentric rings around the mirror? There’s about 5 or 6 rings that look like they’ve been frosted almost. I thought that the whole point was to make sure it reflected light as well as possible??
February 9th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Funny you ask Mr Bond. With a simple turn of this dial I can rotate the mirror such that it reflects the rays of our mighty Sun and focus it into a beam on our planet’s surface hot enough to melt mountains.
Now, shall we adjourn for dinner? While we partake of the finest food available in the continent I hope you take the chance to admire my exotic aquarium. I have the only Great White breeding pair in captivity.
February 9th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Sorry if this seems to be a stupid question,but I’ve googled it, and can’t seem to come up with a good answer: How exactly does this telescope (or any other, for that matter) “see” in infrared. I understand that infrared has a greater wavelength than the light we can see, but still it seems that the telescope is a tad big, even for infrared. I’m sure I’m missing something here, could anyone help me out? Maybe point me towards a good infrared site? Thanks.
February 9th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
The reason you haven’t heard about it is because ESA are fairly bad at communicating with the public. This seems to be from a combination of lack of experience and lack of funding.
February 9th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Edward: “infrared” means below red in frequency, which makes it longer wavelength since the speed is same for all electromagnetic radiation (radio, TV, microwave, IR, light, UV, xray, gamma). speed c = wavelength x frequency, so low freq is longer wavelength.
Jorge: The mirror is just a radiation gathering and focusing piece, but it still has to be the right material to reflect IR. The detection is done by some other instrument, probably a semiconductor array similar to whats in a digital camera, but enhanced and adjusted to capture the IR wavelengths more efficiently.
The bigger size gives better gathering ability, specifically 212% of Hubble’s ability based on size alone (area increases like r^2). But going to longer wavelength would make the resolution (ability to separate two close objects, or ability to detect changes in the position of an object like a star wobbling because of a planet) get worse. Increasing the diameter of the mirror improves the resolution (small resolution is good, resolution = Bessel number x wavelength/diameter). Depending on how much longer, the wavelength/diameter for this mirror might be the same as Hubble. I hope it’s better and not worse.
But I venture to guess that the technology in the IR detector is years ahead of Hubble technology.
February 9th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
I have to agree that this great mission has been extremely under publicized. Of the ESA missions mentioned above, it is the ONLY ONE that I have never heard about, and I’ve been working with Cluster and people in ESA for almost 10 years.
February 9th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
That mirror is sexy. I can not think of another word for it.
February 10th, 2008 at 12:14 am
The Bad Astronomer wrote :
“The telescope is optimized for far infrared light; meaning it will look at dusty disks around stars, planets and stars forming, ancient distant galaxies, and more. No space telescope has ever looked at just these wavelengths before …”
What about the Spitzer space telescope? Wasn’t that an Infra-Red space scope looking at those wavelengths and hasn’t that been performing pretty brilliantly for some years?
For that matter what about IRAS the original Infra-Red Astronomical Satellite which first discovered the dust disks around Vega, Fomalhaut and Beta Pictotris among other things in 1983 and was run by a British-American-Dutch team?
Had you forgotten them already or are they at different wavelengths or … what?
How do they compare with this new Herschel space telescope?
Oh, finally, which Herschel is it named for : Caroline, William or John?
—————–
Incidentally, gotta admit I too hadn’t heard about the Herschel mission – its not been on the Aussie news so far as I’ve heard either …
February 10th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Noting the comments of # andy on 09 Feb 2008 at 5:56 pm
“Herschel Space Telescope? Why have I not heard about this before?
The reason you haven’t heard about it is because ESA are fairly bad at communicating with the public. This seems to be from a combination of lack of experience and lack of funding.”
Probably true but I guess I’d rather they put more money into the science rather than spending it on the publicity. Not that public outreach / education / awareness isn’t important too – but if you _have_ to prioritise – then put the cash into the technology and the programme and let the hopefully successful results do the talking!
I’m on the ESA e-mail /e-newsletter list & as noted above & still hadn’t heard of it though so that does suggest they could’ve done better in that area.
February 10th, 2008 at 5:47 am
Thanks for the “heads up”, BA. As several posters have pointed out, ESA does not seem to be desperately good at PR.
I have to say this, though: Shiny!!
RayCeeYa, I’m not sure what you have against ESA. NASA is currently preparing the James Webb Space Telescope as a successor to Hubble. JWST will concentrate on the near IR, and will be larger even than Herschel, IIUC.
February 10th, 2008 at 6:01 am
So this thing is in some ways even better than Hubble? Well, that’s just freakin’ great. I guess importing cars, computers, stereos, TV’s, toys, and pretty much everything else isn’t enough. Now we’re going to have to go overseas for spectacular pictures of the universe.
Between this and the expanding belief in creationism, America should just get it over with and completely abdicate its once leading role in science.
February 10th, 2008 at 6:22 am
RayCeeYa: That’s partly right, but an equally important effect is that many of the most interesting objects in the universe are obscured by dust. Infrared passes through the dust much better than visible light, allowing us to see places that would otherwise be invisible.
February 10th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Nigel Depledge, “NASA is currently preparing the James Webb Space Telescope as a successor to Hubble.” You might also have pointed out that JWST and Hubble are partnerships between ESA, NASA and the Canadian Space Agency. While NASA is usually the senior parter due to having much more money, many other countries are also involved in space. I seldom see mention of MOST, a little Canadian satellite with Austrian participation that has been doing work similar to that of CAROT’s and as that planned for EPOXI, but was launched several years before CAROT.
February 10th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
NASA is currently preparing the James Webb Space Telescope as a successor to Hubble. JWST will concentrate on the near IR, and will be larger even than Herschel, IIUC.
It is a bit misleading to call JWST as “the successor of Hubble” except for in the sense that it is a major space telescope. It would be more accurate to call it as the “successor of Spitzer”, although that would sound less media sexy.
By the way, it was expected that the JWST telescope was to be named after Spitzer. Instead, NASA decided to name it after a former NASA director. Quite a blunder, considering it is an international mission.
Regarding ESA missions, it’s interesting no one has mentioned Mars or Venus Express missions. The former has produced vast amount of data and quite a few press release images (in ESA standards). The MESSENGER team probably released more information of Venus after the probe’s quick Venus flyby than the Venus Express team during the entire one Venus year long main mission. Granted, Venus Express doesn’t have visible light camera nor radar, but that doesn’t excuse the team’s archaic PR.
February 10th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Speaking as a European, ESA is bad at publicising its missions. An excellent example of this was last November/December when some great results from Venus Express were announced online but which were almost totally ignored by the world’s media. This echoes the poor coordination of the Mars Express results a few years before. Of course there are reasons for this. ESA outreach has to be done in the languages of the member states which means a huge translation effort. As ESA is a collaboration across so many countries there are probably also political issues in coordinating effort to promote missions. ESA also has a much smaller budget than NASA and has far less experience of promoting its science compared to its US cousin.
Now that I’ve bashed them I should add that there are elements of hope. ESA’s Hubble office have actually been doing a great job over the past year or two at getting the media (and blogs) reporting results from the HST (which ESA is a partner in). Many of the HST images that Phil has featured originated from the ESA Hubble site.
In the particular case of Herschel I will cut ESA some slack because the mission has not been launched yet. Even NASA don’t really put huge resources into promoting missions that are still more than six months from their official launch date. It is better to save things up for when you have some results. By the way, the Planck mission will launch with Herschel on the same Ariane 5 rocket.
February 10th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
[...] Biiig mirror That space telescope is going to be so awesome when it is done. Submitted: 4 minutes ago Category: Science Submitter: RssFeed Website: http://www.badastronomy.com Report this link: Click here to report Comments: 0 [...]
February 10th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Following the OT discussion about ESA (sorry, BA), I will say this in their defence:
Cassini-Huygens.
The mission was a joint NASA-ESA-ASI venture, and has been a huge success. The combination of a large Saturn-orbiter and a small Titan lander has worked very well, with both Cassini and Huygens returning some fantastic science, and mind-blowing pictures.
February 10th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Alex:
Thanks for the response. I’m just used to watching the onboard cameras on shuttle missions that seem to show violent vibrations on liftoff.
Was just wondering how it’s stabilized aboard ANY craft.
Thanks again.
Eddie
February 10th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
StevoR:
IR covers a really large wavelength range. Spitzer has instruments going from about 3.6 microns up to 170 microns, while Herschel’s instruments are focussed more on the sub-mm regime; the full wavelength range goes from 60 to 700 microns.
Incidentally, Herschel is the only of those ESA missions that I have heard of, and I don’t work in the infrared… .
[TMB]
February 10th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Gopher65:
a) I’m not American,
b) I don’t watch reality TV
My bad! Well that’s 2 stars for you.
February 10th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
So why aren’t those techs wearing goggles? They’re pretty well gowned overall, but you really don’t want an eyelash messing up a few dozen pixels that might be critical.
- Jack
February 10th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
okay, thanks TMB
February 11th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Jack Hagerty said:
“So why aren’t those techs wearing goggles? They’re pretty well gowned overall, but you really don’t want an eyelash messing up a few dozen pixels that might be critical.”
Jack, I don’t know for sure, but, having worked in clean rooms myself, I can take a stab at answering your question.
Eyelashes are quite big, heavy particles. They may fall off, but they won’t travel far. In a typical clean room, filtered air enters through vents in the ceiling and leaves through vents at floor level (some clean rooms actually have the exit vents in the floor), making the overall flow of air downwards. This reduces the ability of particles of any sort to travel very far. Even so, the biggest risk is small particles (e.g. of skin or dirt or bacteria or mucus); this is because they are hardest to notice and they can travel farther in air (a human body emits a lot of heat and creates quite large convection currents).
Covering most of the operators’ skin and all of their hair mitigates the risk. Eyelashes are (I’m guessing here) a relatively trivial risk by comparison.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Oops, sorry. Tautology in that last sentence.