Updates Herschel & Planck News

[Notebook]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21668712

The European Space Agency (Esa) is about to lose the use of one of its flagship satellites.

Since 2009, the billion-euro Herschel telescope has been unravelling the complexities of star birth and galaxy evolution.

But its instruments employ special detectors that need to be chilled to fantastically low temperatures.

 

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ESA: Herschel to finish observing soon

NASA JPL: Herschel to Complete Its Mission Soon

 

[Notebook]

Planck is still going:

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Planck/Planck_reveals_an_almost_perfect_Universe

I thought I was perfect, can't be if the Universe isn't?

 

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ESA:

 

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ESA:
Herschel links Jupiter's water to comet impact

23 April 2013

ESA’s Herschel space observatory has solved a long-standing mystery as to the origin of water in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, finding conclusive evidence that it was delivered by the dramatic impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in July 1994.

During the spectacular week-long collision, a string of 21 comet fragments pounded into the southern hemisphere of Jupiter, leaving dark scars in the planet’s atmosphere that persisted for several weeks.

The remarkable event was the first direct observation of an extraterrestrial collision in the Solar System. It was followed worldwide by amateur and professional astronomers with many ground-based telescopes and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

ESA’s Infrared Space Observatory was launched in 1995 and was the first to detect and study water in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. It was widely speculated that comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 may have been the origin of this water, but direct proof was missing.

Scientists were able to exclude an internal source, such as water rising from deeper within the planet’s atmosphere, because it is not possible for water vapour to pass through the ‘cold trap’ that separates the stratosphere from the visible cloud deck in the troposphere below.

Thus the water in Jupiter’s stratosphere must have been delivered from outside. But determining its origin had to wait more than 15 years, until Herschel used its sensitive infrared eyes to map the vertical and horizontal distribution of water’s chemical signature.

Herschel’s observations found that there was 2–3 times more water in the southern hemisphere of Jupiter than in the northern hemisphere, with most of it concentrated around the sites of the 1994 comet impact. Additionally, it is only found at high altitudes.

“Only Herschel was able to provide the sensitive spectral imaging needed to find the missing link between Jupiter’s water and the 1994 impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9,” says Thibault Cavalié of the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux, lead author of the paper published in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

“According to our models, as much as 95% of the water in the stratosphere is due to the comet impact.”

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ESA: Herschel and Hubble see the Horsehead in new light

 

[Notebook]

Looks like its just going to be Planck news onward...

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Herschel/Herschel_closes_its_eyes_on_the_Universe

N.

 

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ESA: Herschel finds hot gas on the menu for Milky Way's black hole

 

[Evil_Onyx]

Planck telescope set for switch-off - BBC

The process of disposing of the Planck space telescope has begun.

The satellite, which mapped the "oldest light" in the Universe in unprecedented detail, has completed its mission and will be turned off in two weeks' time.

It is currently some 1.6 million km from Earth, where it is undergoing some final engineering tests.

European Space Agency controllers will initiate a big burn on Planck's thrusters on Wednesday, pushing it away from the planet into a separate orbit.

A second burn on 21 October will run the satellite's propellant supply to exhaustion.

"We drain everything so there's no possibility of having an exploding tank in the future," explained Steve Foley, Esa's spacecraft operations manager for Planck.

"We'll disconnect the batteries and switch off the transmitters, patching the software so they can never be re-activated. Final contact is scheduled for 23 October, and that will be it - Planck will just drift off," he told BBC News.

 

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ESA: Planck on course for safe retirement:

21 October 2013

In preparation for its final switch-off on 23 October, mission controllers today fired Planck’s thrusters to empty its fuel tanks. The burn is one of the final steps to ensure that Planck ends its hugely successful mission in a permanently safe configuration.

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Universe Today: Planck Enters Retirement Shortly; This Picture Shows Just Some Of Its Views

Phys.org:

• Europe's Planck telescope set for retirement
  
  
• Celebrating the legacy of ESA's Planck mission

 

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ESA: Last command sent to ESA's Planck space telescope:

23 October 2013

ESA’s Planck space telescope has been turned off after nearly 4.5 years soaking up the relic radiation from the Big Bang and studying the evolution of stars and galaxies throughout the Universe’s history.

Project scientist Jan Tauber sent the final command to the Planck satellite this afternoon at 12:10:27 UT, marking the end of operations for ESA’s ‘time machine’.

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Sky & Telescope: Planck Spacecraft Shut Down

SpaceRef: Last Command Sent to Planck Space Telescope

Phys.org: Europe's Planck telescope retires

Space Daily: Europe's Planck telescope retires

SPACE.com: Europe's Planck Space Telescope 'Time Machine' Shuts Down

Spaceflight Now: Europe's Planck mission destined for silent death

Space News: Europe’s Planck Space Telescope Shuts Down

 

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SpaceRef: Herschel's 37,000 Science Observations

ESA:

 

[Notebook]

During its four years of operations (2009-2013), the Herschel space observatory scanned the sky at far-infrared and sub-millimetre wavelengths. Observations in this portion of the electromagnetic spectrum are sensitive to some of the coldest objects in the Universe, including cosmic dust, a minor but crucial component of the interstellar material from which stars are born.

http://sci.esa.int/herschel/57755-n...-stellar-nurseries-across-the-galactic-plane/

Is this the youngest thread for Herschel?

N.

 

[Unstung]

There's an older thread about the spacecraft's assembly.

Looking at Herschel, its mirror appears to reflect visible light well.

If scientists could have stuck a visible camera in it, Herschel would have been a wide-angle visible observatory with a larger mirror than Hubble. Or maybe Herschel could have observed the near-infrared like WFIRST. Two missions for the price of one! (albeit a more expensive one)

It's a shame Herschel's 3.5 meter mirror only got four years of life.

 

[Notebook]

Planck News.

http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/06/A_mysterious_ring_of_microwaves

Fifty years ago, astronomers discovered a mystery. They called it Loop I. Today, we still have not fully resolved the mystery of how this giant celestial structure formed but we do now have the best image of it, thanks to ESA’s Planck satellite.

 

[Notebook]

Planck News:

http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/08/Planck_s_flame-filled_view_of_the_Polaris_Flare

This image from ESA’s Planck satellite appears to show something quite ethereal and fantastical: a sprite-like figure emerging from scorching flames and walking towards the left of the frame, its silhouette a blaze of warm-hued colours.

This fiery illusion is actually a celestial feature named the Polaris Flare. This name is somewhat misleading; despite its moniker, the Polaris Flare is not a flare but a 10 light-year-wide bundle of dusty filaments in the constellation of Ursa Minor (The Little Bear), some 500 light-years away.

 

[Notebook]

http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/08/Not_your_typical_protostar

At the centre of this image, captured by ESA’s Herschel space observatory, is a truly peculiar cosmic object: a star named IRAS 19312+1950.

Located over 12 000 light-years from us, this star has puzzled astronomers for many years because it shows conflicting signs of being both extremely old and extremely young.

Astronomers have spotted signs of emission usually associated with old, late-type stars: silicon oxide and hydroxyl masers – the microwave equivalent of a visible-light laser.

But they have also discovered characteristics mostly seen around early-type stars: a chemical-rich enveloping cloud usually seen around youthful stars and in regions of star formation.

 

[Notebook]

Planck's turn!

31 August 2016
ESA's Planck satellite has revealed that the first stars in the Universe started forming later than previous observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background indicated. This new analysis also shows that these stars were the only sources needed to account for reionising atoms in the cosmos, having completed half of this process when the Universe had reached an age of 700 million years.

http://sci.esa.int/planck/58193-first-stars-formed-even-later-than-previously-thought/

 

[Notebook]

Celebrating Herschel's legacy

Title Celebrating Herschel's legacy
Released 18/09/2017 10:00 am
Copyright ESA/Herschel/NASA/JPL-Caltech; acknowledgement: R. Hurt (JPL-Caltech), CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Description
This delicate image showing the intricacies of interstellar bubbles and wisps reveals great turmoil in the W3/W4/W5 complex of molecular clouds and star-forming regions. It was taken by ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory, a trailblazing mission that observed the sky in far-infrared and submillimetre wavelengths between 2009 and 2013.
September has often been the month of memorable moments or milestones for Herschel.
When the satellite was still on Earth, it was in September 2005 that the assembled telescope passed its first tests.

http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2017/09/Celebrating_Herschel_s_legacy

http://sci.esa.int/herschel/59493-how-herschel-unlocked-the-secrets-of-star-formation/

http://sci.esa.int/herschel/59494-the-cosmic-water-trail-uncovered-by-herschel/

 

[Notebook]

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/S...vers_galaxy_merger_in_the_very_early_Universe

13 November 2017
What seemed at first like a rare instance of a huge, ancient galaxy revealed itself to be an even rarer pair of extremely massive galaxies, seen on the brink of merging when the Universe was only a billion years old.

 

[Notebook]

http://sci.esa.int/herschel/59840-herschel-data-links-mysterious-quasar-winds-to-furious-starbursts/

07 December 2017
Astronomers have used ESA's Herschel Space Observatory to solve a decades-old mystery about the origin of powerful cool gas winds in the hot environs of quasars. The evidence linking these powerful winds to star formation in the quasar host galaxies may also help resolve the mystery of why the size of galaxies in the Universe appears to be capped.