A specialist discussion meeting of the RAS.
Organised by Dave Clements (Imperial) and Derek Ward-Thompson (Cardiff)
Observations in the infra-red allow astronomers to probe regions of space that are too obscured by dust to be visible to optical telescopes. The Herschel Space Telescope covers the far-infra-red part of the electro-magnetic spectrum, where objects at high red-shift have their peak emission. It was launched by ESA in 2009. It reached its orbital position at L2 and successfully completed its performance verification and science demonstration phases. It began routine observing of both open time and guaranteed time key programmes in January 2010. Already it has made observations for more than 40 key programmes, ranging from solar system objects to stars, molecular clouds, the interstellar medium, nearby galaxies, distant galaxies and quasars. Its impact will be phenomenal on many branches of astronomy. This meeting will hear about some of the highlights from Herschel's first year of routine observations.
A full programme for the meeting is available as a PDF document here.