Results from the first major science papers from the Herschel Satellite were released this week at a conference in Holland. Launched almost a year ago on the same rocket as Planck, Herschel is an infrared and sub-millimeter telescope, which lets it see not only the stars that generate the visible light we see with our eyes and ordinary cameras, but also the gas and dust that absorb and re-radiate that light. That gas and dust carries information about both the birth and death of stars: the detritus of exploding stars pollutes the interstellar medium, which eventually condenses out to form new generations...
Posted by Andrew on May 6, 2010 8:19 PM
Luckily, not all the astrophysics news this week was so bad. First, and most important, two of our Imperial College Astrophysics postgraduate students, Stuart Sale and Paniez Paykari, passed their PhD viva exams, and so are on their ways to officially being Doctors of Philosophy. Congratulations to both, especially (if I may say so) to Dr Paykari, who I had the pleasure and fortune to supervise and collaborate with. Both are on their way to continue their careers as postdocs in far-flung lands. Second, the first major results from the Herschel Space Telescope, Planck’s sister satellite, were released. There are...
Posted by Andrew on December 19, 2009 11:39 AM
Cross-posted on Andrew Jaffe’s Blog and the Planck Mission Blog. Planck and Herschel are en route to their orbit at L2! We were about 7.5 km from the launch, at the “Agami” viewing site. Here is my golden ticket: We all milled around for half an hour, snapping pictures of friends, eminent scientists, and at least one Nobel prize winner, but it all went silent when they announced the last few minutes before launch. The inevitable 10.9.8.7.6.5.4.3.2.1 and ignition was followed by a still, silent seven or so seconds, and then we saw the smoke and flames. (Apologies for the...
Posted by Andrew on May 15, 2009 12:02 AM
Cross-posted on Andrew Jaffe’s Blog and the Planck Mission Blog. Today we saw the rollout of the gargantuan Planck/Herschel Ariane 5 rocket, when they move it from its assembly building to the launchpad. Spectacular! There are plenty more pictures, and some movies, which I’ll try to edit and post shortly. At the end of the day, I was interviewed and inadvertently kidnapped by Chris Lintott and the BBC Sky at Night team. But I am here to tell the tale (and better fed for it) and ready for the — very — big day tomorrow. Live coverage of the launch,...
Posted by Andrew on May 14, 2009 3:26 AM
With less than a week to go before its planned launch, The Planck Surveyor Satellite has been loaded into the fairing of its Ariane 5 rocket along with its sister satellite, Herschel. It is scheduled to be rolled out to the pad on May 13, and the launch window opens on May 14 at 13:12 GMT. Within three months, it will be at the Lagrange 2 (L2) point, from where it can watch the sky with the Sun, Earth and Moon all comfortably shielded from view. Once there, Planck will scan the sky for at least 14 months. But don’t...
Posted by Andrew on May 7, 2009 10:22 PM
No time for a full blog post, but I wanted to point out the results of the STFC Consultation, now available. Some of my favorite projects like AstroGrid seem to have not fared too well (the consultation panel rated it highly, but PPAN, responsible for the final ranks, disagreed). Nonetheless, Imperial Astrophysics projects like Planck, Herschel, Scuba II, UKIDSS, LISA Pathfinder and XMM Newton appear to have survived the cut. However, It is important to stress that these reports are not the final conclusions of the Programmatic Review. These conclusions will be reached by STFC Council using these reports to...
Posted by Andrew on June 17, 2008 2:21 PM
In his comment on last week’s post, fellow physicist blogger Tommaso lets me know that he’ll be attending a meeting that we’re hosting here at Imperial College next week, Outstanding questions for the standard cosmological model. We’ll be casting a critical eye over current cosmological models and data, but I expect most of us will come to the conclusion that the whole structure is surprisingly weather-sturdy. In fact if you’re any sort of astrophysicist, particle physicist or cosmologist, Imperial Physics is likely to have a meeting for you in London over the next few months. In addition to “Outstanding Questions”,...
Posted by Andrew on March 14, 2007 10:24 PM
Other tags used on this blog: