The LCOGT education operations centre is based in Cardiff University, School of Physics and Astronomy alongside the UK Herschel Outreach Office. Herschel Space Observatory spent over three years taking stunning images of the Universe in far infrared wavelengths, but in April the spacecraft depleted the last of its helium coolant, concluding science operations. After this, the spacecraft operations team performed a series of engineering tests. A series of thruster burns moved it from its orbit around the Lagrangian point, L2 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth, and into an orbit around the Sun. Finally, in June, the spacecraft was switched off.
As well as being tracked by ESA ground stations throughout its mission, amateur astronomers have also enjoyed spotting the spacecraft. Last week, as Herschel began moving away from Earth, Nick Howes and Ernesto Guido used the 2m diameter Faulkes Telescope North in Hawaii to image the spacecraft. They were using time allocated to our education partners, Faulkes Telescope Project, for UK schools and amateur astronomers.
The observation was a particular challenge as the final manoeuvres made by the ESA flight control team resulted in the observatory being at a slightly different position on the sky compared to that predicted by existing orbital data.
The imaging campaign was successful, as seen in the image, with Herschel as a tiny dot indicated by the two cross-hair lines to the right of centre. Stars appear as streaks because the astronomers were tracking the motion of Herschel through the sky.
Herschel’s new orbit will send it around the Sun, coming back into Earth’s neighbourhood around 13 years from now. Determining an accurate orbit now is important, because its increasing distance will make it fainter and much harder to keep track of in the intervening years.
The image was taken on 27 June 2013 with the 2 m Faulkes Telescope North on Haleakala, Hawaii using a Bessel R' band filter, and is a combination of seven 120-second exposures.
