The Telescope for Invisible Stars
It's no secret that space is cold. But in some places, it's
so frigid that light can't radiate in the visible spectrum,
which makes celestial bodies invisible. Now the Herschel Space
Observatory is exposing them. Launched in May by the European
Space Agency, Herschel scans the skies in the infrared spectrum.
In order to avoid infrared interference and temperature fluctuations
from Earth, it hovers in space at the second Lagrange point,
about 930,000 miles (1.5 million km) away, where the gravity
of the Earth and sun balance out. Herschel will operate for
at least three years, during which it will watch stars and
planets being born, revealing more about how the universe
came to be.
Herschel is equipped with a mirror 11.5 ft. (3.5 m) in diameter,
the largest ever built for use in space. The spacecraft itself
is nearly 25 ft. (7.5 m) tall
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