Men on a mission talk about working with space observatories

November 9, 2010 by Admin

Last week, astronomers revealed that they have discovered a new way of finding cosmic zoom lenses, which allow scientists to peer at galaxies in the distant Universe, using the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory.

Several researchers at Imperial College London work on the two observatory missions, being responsible for data analysis and interpretation, and ensuring the instruments are calibrated correctly. Imperial is the only place in the UK where scientists are involved in functional work and scientific analysis on both Planck and Herschel.

Both observatories are collecting data to enable scientists to map out the cosmic background radiation and take images of the early Universe. The two satellites were launched together in May 2009, separating shortly afterwards, and now orbit a point called L2 at the far side of the Earth to the sun.

The common feature that both missions will be exploring is tiny rocks known as 'dust', which drive planet and star formation and absorbed half of all the energy created since the Big Bang. These particles are much smaller than household dust, at a similar size to particles in fumes and smoke, with each particle measuring under one micrometre.

Here, Professor Andrew Jaffe and Dr Dave Clements, from the Department of Physics, tell us about working on the missions.

Adapted from SciGuru.com