Talk:Herschel Space Observatory/Archive 1

Launch delay
Any ideas why the launch was delayed from 2007 -> 2008 ? --Salsa man 19:02, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Broad variety of reasons: Problems with the mounting of the subreflector, problems with the initial design of the cryostat, many technical problems in details of all three instruments

Science goals
The statement that Herschel is only directed towards distant objects is wrong. There are large projects studying the atmospheres of planets in the solar system and on the warm interstellar medium within our Galaxy, i.e. of objects only a few hundred parsecs away.
 * That depends on what one considers `distant'. I've reconstructed the sentence, now including reference to solar system targets, galactic targets and extragalactic targets. Drawback: this information is basically repeated in the listing of Herschel's science goals. Oh well, at least this section no longer states any false (or ambiguous) information. MHD 12:04, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Introduction and mission statement
Instead of listing all people who contributed to this project in the introduction, perhaps it would be better to include the mission statement and other general information into the introduction?

And perhaps some of the technical data can be rewritten to better explain their purpose to those of us who have little scientific information? Crownsteler (talk) 15:00, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

BBC story
ChildofMidnight (talk) 20:02, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Aviation Week cover story
There is a cover article on Herschel here  which deserves a read. I have not yet had time, but someone might like to incorporate some of the information into the article. Wwheaton (talk) 02:37, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Focal length
The article lists the focal length as 27000 mm, which seems a little exessive (27 metres?). any idea where this number came from? I assume the correct value is 2.7m, but i cant find a source Modest Genius  talk 23:07, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

The focal length is 28.5m f/8.7 (http://www.sps.ch/artikel/diverse_artikel/the_herschel_space_observatory/) the primary is fast  f/0.5 but a small slow seconary  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.87.70.209 (talk) 02:40, 15 May 2009 (UTC)