Herschel Spectroscopy of Future Supernova

davecl writes "ESA's Herschel Space Telescope has released its first spectroscopic results. These include observations of VYCMa, a star 50 times as massive as the sun and soon to become a supernova, as well as a nearby galaxy, more distant colliding starburst galaxies and a comet in our own solar system. The spectra show more lines than have ever been seen in these objects in the far-infrared and will allow astronomers to work out the detailed chemistry and physics behind star and planet formation as well as the last stages of stellar evolution before VYCMa's eventual collapse into a supernova. More coverage is available at the Herschel Mission Blog, which I run."

Comments

SPIRE

[digitrev]

Heh. Nice to see results from this. I just did some work related to SPIRE in Summer 08. Namely, some nonlinearities with regards to bolometers (the type of detector used on SPIRE). Just some coop work, but it's kind of nice to see a project you worked on get some nice results. Unfortunately, you can't see the effects of my work because they only show up as second and third harmonics, and the data here doesn't show enough to see it.