Talk:Herschel Space Observatory

Understandability

IMHO the article should briefly explain what part of the spectrum the telescope is looking at and what can be seen there. It is too technical right off, it needs a understandable introduction. 85.197.16.138 (talk) 04:29, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Focal length

The article lists the focal length as 27000 mm, which seems a little exessive (27 metres?). any idea where this number came from? I assume the correct value is 2.7m, but i cant find a source Modest Genius ^talk 23:07, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

The focal length is 28.5m f/8.7 (http://www.sps.ch/artikel/diverse_artikel/the_herschel_space_observatory/) the primary is fast f/0.5 but a small slow seconary —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.87.70.209 (talk) 02:40, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Launch delay

Any ideas why the launch was delayed from 2007 -> 2008 ? --Salsa man 19:02, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Broad variety of reasons: Problems with the mounting of the subreflector, problems with the initial design of the cryostat, many technical problems in details of all three instruments

Science goals

The statement that Herschel is only directed towards distant objects is wrong. There are large projects studying the atmospheres of planets in the solar system and on the warm interstellar medium within our Galaxy, i.e. of objects only a few hundred parsecs away.

That depends on what one considers `distant'. I've reconstructed the sentence, now including reference to solar system targets, galactic targets and extragalactic targets. Drawback: this information is basically repeated in the listing of Herschel's science goals. Oh well, at least this section no longer states any false (or ambiguous) information. MHD 12:04, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Detector temperatures

Only SPIRE and PACS have detector temperatures below 2K. HIFI has a detector temperature between 2 and 3K.

Introduction and mission statement

Instead of listing all people who contributed to this project in the introduction, perhaps it would be better to include the mission statement and other general information into the introduction?

And perhaps some of the technical data can be rewritten to better explain their purpose to those of us who have little scientific information? Crownsteler (talk) 15:00, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Image

The image reflects the design forseen until 2001, i.e. a totally outdated mounting of the subreflector and the old service module design. It should be replaced by one of the current images from the ESA site. According to the Terms of Use this should be possible. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.173.179.240 (talk) 12:59, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

BBC story

[1] ChildofMidnight (talk) 20:02, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Aviation Week cover story

There is a cover article on Herschel here which deserves a read. I have not yet had time, but someone might like to incorporate some of the information into the article. Wwheaton (talk) 02:37, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

decibel

What do you use as reference value when calculating dB's? 10^-12 ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.209.25.26 (talk) 20:05, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

References

• Herschel-HIFI: The Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared
• The Herschel Mission, Scientific Objectives, and this Meeting
• Herschel mission: status and observing opportunities

--Stone (talk) 05:11, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Clarification

The spectrometer has a resolution between 1000 and 5000 [clarification needed] and is ...

If this is a dimensionless unit there needs to be some explanation (a link to another article, perhaps), else it appears that a dimension is missing. This is not in my field, so I do not know the technical merits of the text, only that in reading it seemed a bit odd. - Leonard G. (talk) 00:09, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Summary of the article

Hello, I have moved the "launch and orbit" § to the end of the article.

It seems to me more logical in the life of the satellite.

In addition, this § will have much more details in the near future when the satellite will be submited to manoeuvres to be put in its final Lissajous orbit.

Then, new § will logicaly appear : tests in orbit, activation of the payloads, and finally a very large paragraph with results of the experimenations (many years of very interesting informations, I hope.--Friendly, aaaf-wiki (talk) 04:53, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

That makes sense. I've done the same for Planck. — Aldaron • T/C 05:08, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

The lead paragraph needs to be reworded, though. You have to get a fair way through the article before it becomes clear this is now a flying mission. 79.199.60.61 (talk) 21:35, 16 May 2009 (UTC)