How have the mirror and telescope performed since its launch?
Early Herschel results are showing that the mirror performs flawlessly and delivers to the instruments a beam of radiation from the astronomical source that matches exactly what was predicted, and what the instruments have been designed to accept. The outcome is a system that is beautifully in focus and which allows the most sensitive observations that we could have hoped for. SPIRE contains an imaging photometer and an imaging spectrometer. How do the images that these meters capture differ? The photometer is designed to make images at three different submillimetre wavelengths, analogous to taking pictures in different colours of visible light. These images will help tell us about the physics of regions in space where stars are forming by revealing such properties as the temperature, the mass, the energy output, and the properties of the dust out of which planets are eventually made. The spectrometer will study the other material – the gas – from which stars form, by breaking up the i
