Kuwait Agenda

Europe's new billion-euro Herschel space observatory, has achieved a critical milestone. The telescope has opened the hatch that has been protecting its sensitive instruments from contamination. The procedure allowed light collected by Herschel's giant 3.5m mirror to flood its supercold instrument chamber, or cryostat. The observatory's quest is to study how stars and galaxies form, and how they evolve through cosmic time.

Scientists stress it will be a while yet before they are ready to release a "first light" image from the telescope. Herschel is sensitive to light at long wavelengths in the far-infrared and sub-millimetre range. This will allow it to see past the dust that scatters visible wavelengths, and to gaze at really cold places and objects in the Universe - from the birthing clouds of new stars to the icy comets that live far out in our Solar System.

< Prev