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HERSCHEL
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- Study the formation of galaxies in the early universe and their subsequent evolution
- Investigate the creation of stars and their interaction with the interstellar medium
- Observe the chemical composition of the atmospheres and surfaces of comets, planets and satellites
- Examine the molecular chemistry of the universe
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Characteristics
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| Launch Date |
February 2007 |
| Launch Vehicle |
Ariane V |
| Launch Mass |
3.300 kg |
| Orbit |
Lissajous 1.5 million km |
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The goals of the Herschel mission
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The European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory (formerly called Far
Infrared and Sub-millimetre Telescope or FIRST) will be the first example of
a new generation of space telescopes. It will be the first space observatory
covering the full far infrared and sub-millimetre waveband, and its telescope
will have the largest mirror ever deployed in space. It will be located 1.5 million
kilometres away from Earth at the second Lagrange point of the Earth-Sun system.
Herschel's three and a half metre mirror will collect the light from distant and poorly
known objects, such as newborn galaxies thousands of millions of light-years away, and
will focus it onto three instruments with detectors kept at temperatures close to absolute zero.
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Scientific Objectives
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 With the Planck and Herschel satellite missions of the European Space Agency, the
far-infrared and submillimeter window will offer new investigation
tools toward clusters of galaxies in the distant Universe. These are the
Sunyaev Zel'dovich (SZ) effect of the cosmic microwave background and the
thermal emission of dust grains. The power of the SZ effect is such that Planck is
expected to discover thousands of new clusters at redshifts larger than 0.2,
where only a few tens are known today.
The dust can be present at large scale in
the intracluster medium, and we show that even at very low abundances it is able to
be a major cooling agent for the whole cluster. However the dominating dust emission
will be that of the background infrared star forming galaxies. In all cases, the data
processing of space borne sensitive submillimeter observations of clusters of galaxies
such as the one that Planck and Herschel will provide, will require a very careful
combined analysis of the SZ effect and dust thermal emission.
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| ©Copyright 2004 LSE Space Engineering & Operations AG |
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