Friday, June 12th, 2009

New Views of the Universe from Herschel and Planck Telescopes

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Planck and Herschel lift off on Ariane 5 ECA launcher in French Guiana, 14 May 2009. Copyright: ESA - S. Corvaja, 2009.

Two new space telescopes are en route to their post over 1.5 million km from Earth. Launched in mid-May, the ESA's Herschel and Planck observatories are traveling to a point known as L2, a gravitationally stable point on the side of the Earth directly opposite the sun's position. The two craft will independently orbit the L2 point, which should have less thermal and radiation interference than other locations. We'll talk about the two observatories and what they hope to see.

Guests

Paul Goldsmith
Chief Technologist, Astronomy and Physics Directorate
NASA Project Scientist, Herschel
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Pasadena, California

Charles Lawrence
Principal Scientist, Astrophysics
Project Scientist, US Planck project
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Pasadena, California

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Segment produced by:Christopher Intagliata

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