The Secret History of a Space Telescope

This is a Bath Astronomers talk; for tickets go to Ticketsource via this link.

The Herschel Space Observatory was launched to answer the fundamental questions of how the stars and galaxies were born. Apart from providing partial answers to these two big questions, Herschel made major discoveries about the structure of interstellar gas, the origin of interstellar dust and the source of the water that flows out of our taps. It was also a lot of fun. Because the mission was so much fun, after it finished Stephen interviewed many of the scientists who had been involved in building and using the observatory. He eventually ended up writing a book about it (The Ghost in the Telescope).

In his talk, Stephen will describe some of the scientific discoveries made with Herschel and also describe what it was like, for someone who had only ever used telescopes on the ground, to be caught up in a space astronomy mission.

Professor Stephen Eales