The Herschel Space Observatory is the largest telescope ever sent into space. It's an infrared telescope named in honor of William Herschel who discovered infrared radiation, and his sister Caroline who worked with him. What's infrared? Who launched the telescope? What did we learn from it?

Astronomy ABC - H for Herschel Space Observatory

I love this picture of the Herschel telescope. It's been set against a background image of the Vela C star-forming region. Vela is the constellation that represents the sail of the ship on which Jason sailed searching for the golden fleece.

(Photo: ESA/PACS & SPIRE Consortia, T. Hill, F. Motte, Laboratoire AIM Paris-Saclay, CEA/IRFU – CNRS/INSU – Uni. Paris Diderot, HOBYS Key Programme Consortium)

Part of the Rosette Nebula imaged by Herschel. The nebula, a stellar nursery, lies about 5000 light years away in the constellation Monoceros (the Unicorn).

There are a number of baby stars hidden in the dust clouds. Herschel was able to detect them using long-wave radiation that penetrates the dust. The colors are, of course, false colors since Herschel detects light invisible to our eyes.

Rosette Nebula looks a little stormy to me.

Vela - looks like a blue eye on you.

Angie, here is a more roselike and less stormy optical image of the Rosette Nebula. You can see how it got its name - it's red from energized hydrogen and very roselike, even something of a stem on it.

It is beautiful.

ESA's video Herschel's View of the Galactic Plane was released in April. It's fascinating, almost hypnotic, but at 10 minutes long, you might not want to see all of it unless you're feeling meditative.

They made the video by stitching together hundreds of hours of observations made for the Herschel Infrared Galactic Plane Survey.

The Milky Way, which is about 100,000 light years in diameter, is shaped like a disc. From where we see it, the disc - with stars, gas and dust - looks like a band of stars wound around the sky. If you've ever been to a dark sky site, you've probably seen it. As we look at the Milky Way edge-on, we're looking along the plane of the Galaxy. That's where most of the stars are. The video includes almost 40% of the Galactic plane.

Since Herschel is an infrared telescope, the different wavelengths of infrared light have been assigned colors so that we can see the shapes and structures.

Credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS, SPIRE/Hi-GAL Project
Acknowledgement: G. Li Causi, IAPS/INAF, Italy

The iconic Hubble Space Telescope of the Pillars of Creation is part of the Eagle Nebula. Here is a Herschel Space Observatory picture of the Eagle's stellar nursery . It's a false color – and a stunning one! – image, because Herschel was an infrared telescope.

Astronomy Picture of the Day says
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Image Credit & Copyright: ESA/Herschel/PACS, SPIRE/Hi-GAL Project
Acknowledgment: G. Li Causi, IAPS/INAF

Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula

Herschel Space Observatory picture of the Eagle's stellar nursery . Sure is beautiful.

I agree, Angie, I've put it on my desktop.

Each color represents a wavelength of infrared light, which means that the image overall shows elements of structure. (Did you pick out the bitsy Pillars of Creation in the middle of the picture?) However choosing a color palette for an image can involve some artistry too.

I saved it to my desktop too. Great minds think alike!