ESA en route to the origins of the Universe

[Bill McBlueState]

(cross-posted from LBN)

Two of the most ambitious missions ever attempted to unveil the secrets of the darkest, coldest and oldest parts of the Universe got off to a successful start this afternoon with the dual launch of ESA’s far infrared space telescope Herschel and cosmic background mapper Planck on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana.

Herschel, equipped with the largest mirror ever launched into space, will observe a mostly uncharted part of the electromagnetic spectrum so as to study the birth of stars and galaxies as well as dust clouds and planet-forming discs around stars. In addition, it will be the most effective tool ever devised to look for the presence of water in remote parts of the Universe.

Planck is designed to map tiny irregularities in fossil radiation left over from the very first light in the Universe, emitted shortly after the Big Bang. Planck will have enough sensitivity to reach the experimental limits of what can be observed, thus peering into the early Universe and studying its constituents such as the elusive dark matter and dark energy that continue to be a puzzle to the science community worldwide.

Both of these highly sophisticated spacecraft were lofted into space atop an Ariane 5 ECA vehicle from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at 13:12 UTC (15:12 CEST) today, Thursday 14 May 2009. Almost 26 minutes later, and about two minutes from each other, they were released separately on an escape trajectory toward a virtual point in space, called L2, some 1.5 million kilometres from Earth in the opposite direction to the Sun.

Continued here

What a relief! I'm going to be using Herschel to study star formation in Orion, so I'm very happy to see a successful launch. But there's a lot that still has to happen before the data start coming in. Thinking more broadly, the collaboration between ESA and NASA is going really well. It's nice that some aspects of international collaboration survived the Bush era intact.

[Joanne98]

1. Why is everybody so interested in Orion?

[Bill McBlueState]

2. It's the nearest massive star-forming region

I guess there's some ambiguity there -- When astronomers say "Orion," they're usually referring to a certain part of the Galaxy 1,400 light years away in which a large number of new stars are forming. We call this part of the Galaxy "Orion" because it's located in the same direction as the stars of the well-known constellation Orion.

[tocqueville]

3. see post here too

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5652920&mesg_id=5652920

[SurfingScientist]

4. Same here! Very relieved - will use Herschel...

... to study star formation early in the Universe. Cannot do as much detail as Bill can do in Orion, can only measure star formation rates on a galaxy-wide scale at that distance - but this tells us a lot obout the history of star birth in the Universe and our own Milky Way. Work of the kind that Bill is doing will be invaluable to better understand how star formation works, and how to interpret observations of distant galaxies.

:toast: