Hubble is not alone. First there was Spitzer. Now there is Herschel, which launched in May, opened its eyes last month and today, the European Space Agency released a sneak preview of the things to come! Behold:
Note the image on the left comes from Spitzer. The obvious higher quality of Herschel is a sign of the exciting advancements that we are making in telescope technology. Both Spitzer and Herschel can see in the infrared. Hubble remains the lone ranger in the visible (which is why it is so important to keep it going!).
An important side note: Herschel’s naming and deployment marks the first time that a major instrument has been named for a woman. Herschel telescope is named for Caroline and her brother William.
To celebrate the triumph of a woman astronomer being recognized in this way, let’s have a look at Adrienne Rich’s “Planetarium” written in 1968 to celebrate Caroline’s life:
Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750-1848),
astronomer, sister of William; and others.
A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them
a woman ‘in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles’
in her 98 years to discover
8 comets
She whom the moon ruled
like us
levitating into the night sky
riding the polished lenses
Galaxies of women, there
doing penance for impetuousness
ribs chilled
in those spaces of the mind
An eye,
‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’
from the mad webs of Uranusborg
encountering the NOVA
every impulse of light exploding
from the core
as life flies out of us
Tycho whispering at last
‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’
What we see, we see
and seeing is changing
the light that shrivels a mountain
and leaves a man alive
Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body
The radio impulse
pouring in from Taurus
I am bombarded yet I stand
I have been standing all my life in the
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-
luted that a light wave could take 15
years to travel through me And has
taken I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind.
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