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.

- Jack

My bad! Well that’s 2 stars for you.

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]

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

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.

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.

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.

Between this and the expanding belief in creationism, America should just get it over with and completely abdicate its once leading role in science.

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.

“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.

“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 …

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.

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.

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.

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.