Belated congrats to ESA & our European friends on the successful launch! Naturally, I was at the doctor all morning & missed it.

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/herschelplanck...4SJZVNUF_1.html

Herschel has a VMC? Full globe images!

I hope ESOC can muscle their way in to get a few VMC images in there during cruise.

Wouldn't any such pictures of the Earth be blinded by the Sun? I thought Herschel was supposed to go to L2, right? Now, we could get some potentially nice pictures of the moon, but the viewing angle on that camera looked fairly wide.

wow...just W-O-W!
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEM76A0P0WF_index_0.html

Very nice. Big mirrors in space .

.. and we have pictures...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8143447.stm

.. and...

http://herschel.esac.esa.int/FirstLight.shtml

Hi !

I've been reading UMSF for some time... and I couldn't resist posting this

http://herschel.esac.esa.int/FirstParallelModeImages.shtml

First observations of our Milky Way in SPIRE/PACS parallel mode reveal cold material structures with unprecedented detail.

Beautiful image but seems a little blurry, sharpened version reveal lot of details indeed!

Just heard a trailer for this programme, Part 1 of 2, to be broadcast in BBC Radio 4 in the UK on Wednesday morning: The Herschel Space Telescope.

A friend in the US reports that the "Listen again" / iPlayer links work, over there at least, for radio programmes. I'll definitely be ripping it with 'get_iplayer'; it sounds really excellent - from the trailer, anyway...

A new website has gone online for Hershel images.

http://oshi.esa.int/

Herschel Science Demonstration Phase Initial Results Presentations:
http://herschel.esac.esa.int/SDP_IR_wkshop.shtml