NASA - ESA: Herschel Completes Its 'Cool' Journey in Space. Herschel Space Observatory Finds Mega Merger of Galaxies

 

Andromeda, also known as M31, is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way. Sensitive to infrared light from cool dust mixed in with the gas, Herschel seeks out clouds of gas where stars are born. Andromeda is host to several hundred billion stars, and this Herschel image clearly shows that many more will soon spark into existence. Image credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS & SPIRE Consortium, O. Krause, HSC, H. Linz

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PASADENA, Calif. -- The Herschel observatory, a European space telescope for which NASA helped build instruments and process data, has stopped making observations after running out of liquid coolant as expected.

The European Space Agency mission, launched almost four years ago, revealed the universe's "coolest" secrets by observing the frigid side of planet, star and galaxy formation.

"Herschel gave us the opportunity to peer into the dark and cold regions of the universe that are invisible to other telescopes," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington. "This successful mission demonstrates how NASA and ESA can work together to tackle unsolved mysteries in astronomy."

Confirmation the helium is exhausted came today, at the beginning of the spacecraft's daily communication session with its ground station in Western Australia. A clear rise in temperatures was measured in all of Herschel's instruments.

Herschel launched aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana in May 2009. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., built components for two of Herschel's three science instruments. NASA also supports the U.S. astronomical community through the agency's Herschel Science Center, located at the California Institute of Technology's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center in Pasadena.

Herschel's detectors were designed to pick up the glow from celestial objects with infrared wavelengths as long as 625 micrometers, which is 1,000 times longer than what we can see with our eyes. Because heat interferes with these devices, they were chilled to temperatures as low as 2 kelvins (minus 271 degrees Celsius, or 456 Fahrenheit) using liquid helium. The detectors also were kept cold by the spacecraft's orbit, which is around a stable point called the second Lagrange point about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. This location gave Herschel a better view of the universe.

"Herschel has improved our understanding of how new stars and planets form, but has also raised many new questions," said Paul Goldsmith, NASA Herschel project scientist at JPL. "Astronomers will be following up on Herschel's discoveries with ground-based and future space-based observatories for years to come."

The mission will not be making any more observations, but discoveries will continue. Astronomers still are looking over the data, much of which already is public and available through NASA's Herschel Science Center. The final batch of data will be public in about six months.

"Our goal is to help the U.S. community exploit the nuggets of gold that lie in that data archive," said Phil Appleton, project scientist at the science center.

Highlights of the mission include:

-- Discovering long, filamentary structures in space, dotted with dense star-making knots of material.

-- Detecting definitively, for the first time, oxygen molecules in space, in addition to other never-before-seen molecules. By mapping the molecules in different regions, researchers are learning more about the life cycles of stars and planets and the origins of life.

-- Discovering high-speed outflows around central black holes in active galaxies, which may be clearing out surrounding regions and suppressing future star formation.

-- Opening new views on extremely distant galaxies that could be seen only with Herschel, and providing new information about their high rates of star formation.

-- Following the trail of water molecules from distant galaxies to the clouds of gas between stars to planet-forming solar systems.

-- Examining a comet in our own solar system and finding evidence comets could have brought a substantial fraction of water to Earth.

-- Together with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, discovering a large asteroid belt around the bright star Vega.

Other findings from the mission include the discovery of some of the youngest stars ever seen in the nearby Orion "cradle," and a peculiar planet-forming disk of material surrounding the star TW Hydra, indicating planet formation may happen over longer periods of time than expected. Herschel also has shown stars interact with their environment in many surprising ways, including leaving trails as they move through clouds of gas and dust.

More information is online at  

http://www.herschel.caltech.edu , 

http://www.nasa.gov/herschel 

 and

 http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel .

 

 

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

J.D. Harrington 202-358-5241
Headquarters, Washington
j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

 

The Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy is captured in this stunning infrared view from Herschel and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. This nearby "dwarf" galaxy looks like a fiery circular explosion. The ribbons are actually giant ripples of dust, spanning tens or hundreds of light-years. Image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI
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This view of the Orion nebula, taken by the Herschel and Spitzer space telescopes, highlights fledgling stars hidden in the gas and dust clouds. In several hundred thousand years, some of these dense clumps of dust and gas will gather enough material to trigger nuclear fusion at their cores and blaze into stardom. Image credit: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech/IRAM
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This composite image of the peculiar galaxy Centaurus A shows longer-infrared wavelengths captured by Herschel and X-rays from the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton. The inner structural and jet features are helping scientists understand the mechanisms and interactions within the galaxy. Image credit: Far-infrared: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/C.D. Wilson, MacMaster University, Canada; X-ray: ESA/XMM-Newton/EPIC
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Dense filaments of gas in this space cloud, called IC5146, are seen clearly in Herschel's infrared view. Herschel has revealed that clouds between stars contain networks of these tangled gaseous filaments, stretching for tens of light-years through space, and that the filaments may result from interstellar sonic booms throughout our Milky Way galaxy. Image credit: ESA/Herschel/SPIRE/PACS/D. Arzoumanian (CEA Saclay)
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Herschel Space Observatory Finds Mega Merger of Galaxies

 

 

WASHINGTON -- A massive and rare merging of two galaxies has been spotted in images taken by the Herschel space observatory, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA participation.

Follow-up studies by several telescopes on the ground and in space, including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope, tell a tale of two faraway galaxies intertwined and furiously making stars. Eventually, the duo will settle down to form one super-giant elliptical galaxy.

The findings help explain a mystery in astronomy. Back when our universe was 3 billion to 4 billion years old, it was populated with large reddish elliptical-shaped galaxies made up of old stars. Scientists have wondered whether those galaxies built up slowly over time through the acquisitions of smaller galaxies, or formed more rapidly through powerful collisions between two large galaxies.

The new findings suggest massive mergers are responsible for the giant elliptical galaxies.

"We're looking at a younger phase in the life of these galaxies -- an adolescent burst of activity that won't last very long," said Hai Fu of the University of California at Irvine, who is lead author of a new study describing the results. The study is published in the May 22 online issue of Nature.

"These merging galaxies are bursting with new stars and completely hidden by dust," said co-author Asantha Cooray, also of the University of California at Irvine. "Without Herschel's far-infrared detectors, we wouldn't have been able to see through the dust to the action taking place behind."

Herschel, which operated for almost four years, was designed to see the longest-wavelength infrared light. As expected, it recently ran out of the liquid coolant needed to chill its delicate infrared instruments. While its mission in space is over, astronomers still are scrutinizing the data, and further discoveries are expected.

In the new study, Herschel was used to spot the colliding galaxies, called HXMM01, located about 11 billion light-years from Earth, during a time when our universe was about 3 billion years old. At first, astronomers thought the two galaxies were just warped, mirror images of one galaxy. Such lensed galaxies are fairly common in astronomy and occur when the gravity from a foreground galaxy bends the light from a more distant object. After a thorough investigation, the team realized they were actually looking at a massive galaxy merger.

Follow-up characterization revealed the duo is churning out the equivalent of 2,000 stars a year. By comparison, our Milky Way hatches about two to three stars a year. The total number of stars in both colliding galaxies averages out to about 400 billion.

Mergers are fairly common in the cosmos, but this particular event is more unusual because of the prolific amounts of gas and star formation, and the sheer size of the merger at such a distant epoch.

The results go against the more popular model explaining how the biggest galaxies arise: through minor acquisitions of small galaxies. Instead, mega smash-ups may be doing the job.

NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. For more information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/herschel

and

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel

NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com
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