Comments on: Herschel opens its eye!

By: miguel

miguel — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 06:46:46 +0000

i just had the weirdest trip. If the spiral galaxy is 25 million LIGHT years away, then is the picture a refraction of light from Whirlpool that originated millions of years ago? I.e., flip of the coin, if there was a telescope on Whirlpool Galaxy that took a picture of our galaxy, and imagine it could zoom in even further into this planet, then would it be looking at our planet but millions of years ago? If it could zoom in even further, could it see the dinosaurs?

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:57:42 +0000

Followup from secondlight:
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2009/07/second_light_herschel_and_hubb.php

By: DrFlimmer

DrFlimmer — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:26:17 +0000

@ Astra:

Yeah. But interferometry is also a tool that expands the power of ground-based telescopes. The ESO has tested it for their optical telescopes and it worked! Of course, building an interferometer with ground-based and space telescopes would really expand our view. So, yes, both are needed, but the urge is not so big…

By: mAck

mAck — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:10:09 +0000

Its so amazing when you put the two shots here one in front of the other, all the dark zones correspond perfectly to the infrarred light zones, just like you made something out of nothing.

GIF: http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/3fd517267e.gif
SWF (smoother, smaller size and colorful): http://megaswf.com/view/511c0d0d3f4ccf1238023d52ec38cef3.html

By: Astra

Astra — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:42:27 +0000

“Our ground-based telescope are, thanks to adaptive optics, at least as good as Hubble by now. And they will become even better. So there is no need anymore for optical telescopes in space.”

Not quite. Ground-based telescopes are competitive with HST over very small fields of view and while they will get better, they will not be able to engage in wide field imaging or diffraction-limited imaging at the short end of the optical passband (not to mention the UV) that could compete with a second-generation Hubble. We need both.

By: RightPaddock

RightPaddock — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:16:52 +0000

A major downside to getting older is that I wont get to see the telescopes of the future, I’ve no doubt they’ll be awesome

Maybe we should be giving them nicks – this one could be Cyclops?

It’s a long way from home so I guess there wont be any repair missions. It’s website says its got an operational life of 3 years – that’s not long, bit sad actually

Well done ESA

By: M51: Herschel abre os olhos e apresenta sua primeira imagem « Eternos Aprendizes

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:08:43 +0000

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