On Wednesday 24th June, we’re delighted to be joined by Professor Stephen Eales of Cardiff University for a talk on The Secret History of a Space Telescope.
Reserve your seat using: https://www.ticketsource.com/bath-astronomers/t-qmmmqna
Join Stephen as he shares his experiences and those of others of the building, launch and operation of the Herschel Space Telescope.
The Herschel Space Observatory was launched to answer the fundamental questions of how the stars and galaxies were born. Apart from providing partial answers to these two big questions, Herschel made major discoveries about the structure of interstellar gas, the origin of interstellar dust and the source of the water that flows out of our taps. It was also a lot of fun. Because the mission was so much fun, after it finished Stephen interviewed many of the scientists who had been involved in building and using the observatory.
He eventually ended up writing a book about it (‘The Ghost in the Telescope’).
In this talk, Stephen will describe some of the scientific discoveries made with Herschel and also describe what it was like, for someone who had only ever used telescopes on the ground, to be caught up in a space astronomy mission.
About Prof Stephen Eales
Stephen Eales is an astronomer who also writes about astronomy. After research positions at the Institute for Astronomy in Hawaii and the Space Telescope Science Institute, he is now a professor of astrophysics at Cardiff University, where he carries out research into the origin and evolution of galaxies. He has written two books about astronomy for a general audience: Origins – the origin of planets, stars, galaxies and the universe; and The Ghost in the Telescope. He was awarded the Herschel Medal by the Royal Astronomical Society for his contributions to observational astrophysics.