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First Light Images From Herschel Satellite Released
davecl writes "The first images from the Herschel satellite have been released by ESA. The images are of the galaxy M51 and show a lot of structure and other features never seen before. Coverage of these results can be found on the ESA website and on the Herschel mission blog. There's a lot of work still to be done on tuning the satellite and instruments for optimum performance, but these very early results already show the promise of this mission. I work on this project and can say that these results are really impressive at this early stage!"
Does the image taken of the ocean right after launch not count? Can anyone dig it up?
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
it makes me sad that this seems like frivolous spending in light of the social issues this planet is facing
Hey without this "frivolous spending" there may not be a society to have social issues. Science is about interpreting the physical world which we all depend on for our survival. You never know what improvements to our lives will come from the "frivolous spending". It may even save the planet itself.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Considering that this image was taken while the main mirrors were still quite warm and not down to operating temperatures, this observatory is going to do great things once fully operational.
I work on this project and can say that these results are really impressive at this early stage!"
Actually, we find your work to be subpar. Perhaps if you were not posting on slashdot, this telescope would not be the failed lemon that it is. Get back to work, and let's not hear back from you until we have some surface detail of Pluto.
This is my sig.
Then get off your sorry ass and go out there and do something about these social issues. You're spending valuable time posting on Slashdot - time that could be well spent working on these issues. In fact, the resources you're using on your computer could be better spent towards fixing those social issues.
Start small - make yourself a model for others to follow. It's what Mother Theresa did, and she didn't waste her time on a technology site complaining that all the stuff they wrote about were frivolous. She was too busy, and you should be too.
Nice to see that at least one slashdot reader really is a rocket scientist!
The best theoretical resolution at 100 microns will be 7.2 arcseconds, limited by the size of the main mirror. Hubble can do 0.05 arcseconds at 0.5 microns (visible light). This may not seem all that impressive, but it about 4 times better than previous far-infrared observatories. And the instruments on-board are significantly more advanced than anything ever used for far-infrared astronomy.
It's largely because of science that you can look at the problems we have today and consider them serious social issues. Rewind a thousand years and near-starvation was more or less the natural state of peasants everywhere, diseases routinely killed large fractions of the population everywhere, etc.
If you want to complain about frivolous spending complain about military spending which is not only of much greater magnitude than scientific expenditures, but also tends to create more problems than it solves.
The maximum resolution of a telescope is proportional to the diameter of its objective (main lens or mirror), and inversely proportional to the wavelength at which it's observing. This is observing at wavelengths 100 times longer than the visible and near-IR instruments like Hubble observe, so it's at a 100x disadvantage coming out of the starting gate.
We've never had images anywhere near this good in this part of the spectrum. I'm very sorry that they offend you.
But you're right. We definitely shouldn't field any instruments until we're ready to deliver, power and support an array at Neptune's distance. After all, it's not like we learn anything from intermediate steps. Just look at all the money we wasted, wasted, on Hubble. Or Palomar. Or Galileo's first telescope. (After all, who needed to know that Jupiter had moons, or Saturn had rings?)
Herschel views in far infrared -- 70 to 160 um (micrometers) in TFA example. Here's a Hubble M51 shot in visible light which is sub-micron wavelength. The shorter wavelength permits greater resolution for a given mirror size.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080614.html
Though I've looked around a bit, nobody seems to have pointed out something that appears quite interesting in those pictures. The two arms of the galaxy take a sharp turn at mirror points. This seems to imply that the speed of rotation of the galaxy increased significantly suddenly. I'm no astronomer, but this seems important. Does anyone who knows more than me care to shed some light on the matter?
One of the most serious social issues that we face is that people don't value knowledge and learning for its own sake. When the heights of human potential - at any part of the spectrum - are ignored, we all suffer.
We cannot solve social problems by retreating from our highest endeavors. The cost of the space program in the USA per family is the same as what it costs to see a movie. But military programs, inherently negative and wasteful, consume HALF of the federal income taxes paid. We ignore our social problems. We put our national energies into war, and the budget is a reflection of that.
There. That's a proper response to your trolling, don't you think?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!