Why do we actually go into Space? What is it that drives us towards putting up more and more satellites to observe the Universe, when at the same time we are building bigger and bigger telescopes on the ground? For the professional Astronomer this is obvious. For the Public at large, it isn’t.

The electromagnetic spectrum as observed from Earth

In the early sixties, the first “space”  balloons were launched to the edge of the Earth’s Atmosphere to take a glimpse at the Universe using sensitive instruments that could observe the skies in X-Ray region of the electromagenetic spectrum. It was a major breakthrough for Astronomers to be able to actually go beyond the visible region of the spectrum. It allowed them to take a look at the violent Universe with another perspective. X-ray Astronomy was born.

On the other extreme, the higher up a mountain astronomers could place observatories, the more they could see in the region beyond the visible towards longer wavelengths. The cold Universe became apparent and with it Infra-Red Astronomy thrived.  This was the beginning of human exploration in spectral regions beyond the visible. Multiwavelength Astronomy was born.
Today’s instruments and telescopes are larger, more sensitive, better and reveal a lot more than ever before. Remember the first images from a corrected Hubble Space Telescope? They fascinated us. They showed a universe that, even in the visible was completely unknown to us. With satellites like ESA’ s XMM-Newton or NASA’s Chandra, we are beginning to discover phenomena that we could only dream of some forty years ago! Active Galactic Nuclei, violent stellar explosions and proof of the makings of a black hole fill the scientific literature! On the other end, spacecraft like the pioneering work that IRAS  and ISO carried out and the newly launched giant infrared observatories such as Spitzer and Herschel will takes us into the wombs of the galaxy, where stars are being born! The sky will never be the same!  It is a wonderful time to be here and now and to experience all these phenomena.

With the advancement of technology on Earth we can certainly today match Hubble’s capabilities with ground-based telescopes. Projects, such as ESO’s VLT or ALMA are pushing optical technology to the limits to bring us qualitative data in the visible. The driving factor for space telescopes is certainly what is invisible from the ground. That is financially justifiable. That is why our focus in Space is in high-energy Astrophysics (x-rays and gamma-rays), because we’ll never be able to build ground-based telescopes to cover those wavelength regions. The same applies to the far infrared and beyond. We need dedicated observatories up there to study phenomena over long periods of time. As long as Hubble is up there, however, we have to make the best of it, while its maintenance is cheaper than building something new.

ESA Spacecraft cover the full range of the electromagnetic spectrum from Space covering wavelengths form the microwave to the gamma rays.

Today there are basically two types of satellites. Those that have a pointing function; meaning they need to be pre-programmed every once in a while to observe certain objects and survey satellites that are in robot-mode.  The Principal Investigator  (or P.I.) satellites are regulary pre-programmed with a set of pointings in order to study specific objects in the sky over longer periods or in more detail. Objects like the Orion Nebula, where the birth of stars takes place is a fascinating region of the sky for the infra-red experts. While the galactic centre of our Milky Way is cluttered with black hole candidates and dying stars that can be studied by ESA’s XMM-Newton X-Ray spacecraft or Integral in the gamma-ray region. There are, hwoever, several survey spacecraft that scan the sky for specific phenomena. Hipparcos, the first astrometric satellite of its kind and its successor Gaia, to be launched in the near future, have contributed to Astronomy in a very fndamental way by measuring over 100,000 stars positions. With Gaia, one hopes to measure 1 billion stars thereby giving us more insight into the evolution of the Galaxy and to study typical relativistic effects in more detail. Planck and WMAP are studying the Cosmic Microwave Background to answer questions about the origins of the Big Bang. Much of the work and research has yet to be carried out before we can ever get a small glimpse of this vaste Universe. With the telescopes on the ground and our satellites in Space humankind continues to push curiosity further and evolve our undesrtanding of the heavens above!

Augen im All. The German-Language Planetarium Show

The German language Planterium Show “Augen im All” got off to a fantastic start on 7th May, 2009. Simultaneously, the show kicked off at 19:00 hours in Berlin, Vienna and Luzern. Coordinated amongst 30 German-speaking planetatria in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the show was a “first” in its making. Together with ESA’s support, the show highlights three current aspects. Being shown during the International Year of Astronomy, the film opens in Italy where Galileo explains to a colleague about his discoveries of craters on the Moon, the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter.  The classical observations that changed our understanding of the Universe forever! Then, we are jolted into a modern-day control room at ESA’s Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, where we follow the launch of Herschel and Planck; two spacecraft very significant to Astronomy. The question that that film very nicely descibes is something that is very close to my heart, a message that I have advocated throughout this year: Why do we observe the skies from Space?

Prior to the show, I had the opportunity to address the audience and spend a few words on ESA’s contribution to Astronomy. Based on the electromagnetic spectrum, I proceeded to explain how today we cover much of the spectrum beyond the visible and how we have dramatically advanced our understanding of the Universe in the last 20 years! Along with missions like XMM-Newton, Integral, Herschel/ISO, Planck and other space missions from other countries, we have opened an opportunity that is so unique that we have yet to understand and process everything that we are observing around us!

The third aspect of the film focuses on our ambitions in exploring the Red Planet! And even here, we are pioneers! We landed on a body than no one has ever landed on before! Titan with our Huygens mission is only a precursor to the wonderful things we plan to achieve with ExoMars, our first rover on the Red Planet that we plan to send in 2016.

I highly recommend this show to anyone curiouse to know more about our space missions and the work that we are carrying out in a ground-breaking era!

The XMM-Newton and Integral Science Operations Team Reps

It is Thursday 26th March 2009. The weather is cool so early this morning, but the skies are a perfect blue. As Karen and I approach ESAC from the M503 highway, you can see the old castle perched on top of the hill and as you get closer, you see the contrast. A satellite dish antenna, majestically placed just below the castle! ESA signs from the highway lead us directly to the entrance of the European Space Astronomy Centre.

The centre is quiet this morning. We are met by Felix, our contact from the Communication and Education Office in ESAC who assures us that preparations are underway. We walk into the the XMM-Newton Control Room and all is quiet at 09:30. People seem to begin the day rather late around here.

By 10:00, finally people begin to show up and Mauro, our technical contact finally gets the guys to reel in the video Conference equipment. Thanks to the Herschel Team nest door, who lent it to us and saved us a lot of hassle. The communication team arrive and prepare to alert the media to this live webcast. We discuss the details as to how best to go about announcing it to the media and the Communication team leaves.

At 2:00 pm Maria and Matthias from the XMM-Newton Science Operations Team, and Erik and Marion from the INTEGRAL Science Operations Team arrive. We are all ready to go through the debriefing and rehearse our lines! Wait! The satellite models and the ESA flag is missing! Now we are almost ready to start our dry run.  Tomi, our education officer-turn star photographer is a blessing! He shoots tons of pictures that can later be used for our news release.

Ah fianlly! Simon from ESO appears out of nowhere on the screen. A bit scruffy, he is impressed by our setting. The backdrop looks really professional! And it IS professional. While this rehearsal is going on XMM-Newton is churning out data in the background and some of the control officers keep walking in-and-out of the room going about their daily business! Everything goes as planned! Let’s cross our fingers that all goes well on the day itself! We all say bye to Simon and he signs off after getting everyone in a very cheerful mood! Good for you Simon. We spend another two hours going over our lines and making sure that everyone knows what to say and when to say it! I’m mega impressed by the professionalism of everyone! This has been an exceptionally successful day.

The group gathered around the dry run video conference

As April approaches, a lot is happening at ESA in preparation for the big event. The main focus will be on ESAC (the European Space Astronomy Centre), our centre near Mardrid in Spain. Here is where Science Operations for all our Science missions reside. We will take part in the live webcast from here and have three events lined up, all of which are very exciting:

- We plan to use our X-Ray spacecraft, XMM-Newton to observe a single object and to produce an special image. We hope to inspire other potential observations in other wavelength regions to combine the data and produce an in-depth multiwavelength image of this object. The image and object are a well-kept secret!

- One  that I am particularly excited about it the monitoring of the Galactic Bulge with Integral, our Gamma-Ray observatory.  My colleague Erik Kuulkers has been monitoring the GB over the past couple of years and his observation run has found a permanent slot in Integral’s Science Operations (see http://isdc.unige.ch/Science/BULGE/). In fact, Erik was so creative, he made a YouTube movie out of this. Check it out at The Galaxy’s bulge seems to twinkle like a Christmas Tree (says our Integral Project Scientist Chris Winkler.) Now some of those Gamma/X-Ray sources could be interactive binaries of a companion star revolving around the central star within seconds. Others are beyond interactive and show characteristics of a Black Hole  (e.g. 1E 1740.7-2942 which has a period of 600 days.) Very very fascinating science! We plan to run a competition, where participants will be asked to gather data for a number of sources that we choose; there will be about 20 sources listed to choose from. Together with archived data, we expect participants to create lightcurves similar to the one you see below.

- The last thing we are preparing for is “Spot the Spacecraft in the Sky!” Here observers will be able to find ephemeris for several spacecraft visible in the Sky from their location, including: HST, XMM-Newton and the ISS. A little competition will take place of images submitted to us. The best image will get aprize!

Last night I reported on our activities during the International Year of Astronomy to the ESA Science Programme Committee (SPC). The Committee is composed of delegates from all our member states, who decide on our programme and agree together with us on its execution. We have to report to the delegates on a regular basis informing them on all our activities in the Science domain. My presentation focused on how we, ESA, are involved in the IYA. Which is basically in two ways: one way is through the Cornerstone Projects, by contributing (just like I am doing right now in the Cosmic Diary), and the other through special activities that we have identified to promote the fantastic Science that we are carrying out with our missions!

Check out out Podcasts! We just released our first Podcast and they can be found under Science@ESA under iTunes! We talk all about the electromagnetic spectrum and what you could discover in the various wavelength regions that can be observed with our Spacecraft. Go and check it out!!

The Opening Ceremony was a complete success! From the organizers’ side things went like clockwork. The cocktail party that took place on 15th January at the Palais de Decouverte found many participants mingling and creating a whole bunch of ideas on what to do next. For me, it was a chance to bring people together and to discuss our next steps. What to do and where to go.

Obviously my very next attention is focused on two main events. The 100-hours of Astronomy and the launch of our two astronomical spacecraft, Herschel and Planck. Both happening in April. My job is to provide the widest possible exposure of ESA’s spacecraft in operation (XMM-Newton and Integral) during the 100-hours by requesting the Science Teams to synchronize the observation of some of the objects visible in the night sky emphasizing the aspect of multiwavelength Astronomy, the message that has become the theme of all our activities. At the same time, I’ve got to coordinate getting the Planck Dome and Herschel Truck to ESTEC during that period. It’s wonderful that we can cover 4 distinct wavelength regions all in one month: X-Rays, Gamma-Rays, Infrared, Microwaves …. all from space!!! Ravishing!!

Meanwhile at the office…. Gotta get back to finally getting our first podcast out!

The Opening Ceremony of the International Year of Astronomy has gotten to a fantastic start! Over 900 registered participants were taking part and registration went very very smoothly. Dignitatires made their opening speeches and to my amazement Jean-Michel Jarre was the “master of ceremonies”! How appropriate!

At our stand things went exremely smoothly! The ESA stand was very prominent with plenty of material to hand out and plenty of information given. We even had IYA golf balls to give away!! The Herschel Truck and the Planck Dome were all up and running! In perfect harmony! And people were streaming in-and-out all days long! We had some very prominent visits from the ESA DG to the ESA Director of Science and other dignitaries, who passed by.

It is 14:00 hours on the day before the big event that will be taking place tomorrow. I have freed my calendar for the day to dedicate my full attention to the tasks at hand. There are many.

The big Planck Dome is being erected in front of the UNESCO and will be completed in a few hours. The Herschel Truck which left the Netherlands this morning is planned to arrive this evening. A lot of work in publicizing, coordinating and assisting is being carried out by the ESA Communication Department. From the Exhibition team that is helping out with the internal aspects to the France Country Desk everything seems to be in motion. We also delivered little folders that will be used to provide conference material to all participants and those are currently being prepared as well. Due to the proximity of the event to our Headquarters, we are naturally implicated, even in the security aspects!

All fingers crossed, let’s hope all goes well the next two days.

It’s an early November morning and ESTEC is very quiet and dark at 07:30 hours. It’s cold and dreary out there, which allows the mind to focus more on the tasks at hand. Today, like all other days during this time of the year, is very busy. We have to review out budgets, spend time in meetings, be creative, and worry about the upcoming meetings.

We are launching two major satellites in a few months. Herschel and Planck, two outstanding satellites are about to open new research opportunities and give us a true glimpse into electromagnetic regions we have never seen before with such clarity! Hmm … the infrared eyes can truly be spectacular, did you know that? They enhance regions of the Universe where stars are born! The nurseries in the sky! Some galaxies do not look at all the same! I was just looking at an infrared picture taken with our previous IR satellite, ISO, of the Andromeda Galaxy. Wow that looked spectacular! Here, let me show you an image of it:

Notice how Andromeda looks in the visible (black-and-white) image? It has a bright core with all the spirals clearly visible. Suddenly, you look in the infrared and you see rings around the whole galaxy! Those rings are illuminated dust and  gast showing some indication of star-forming regions! To add to the excitement, this is what Andromeda looked 2.9 million years ago! Who knows how it would look now!

OK, OK, on astronomical scales, not much can happen in 3 million years, since stars take millions upon millions of years to form. But still, we are always looking in the past! Astronomy is actually something like archaeo-physics … looking at the past of things. To make it even more interesting, no star or galaxy is in the same stage of it evolution. Therefore, the more stars and galaxies we study, the more phases of a star’s evolution we come across! Which tells us a lot about where we came from and where we might be going …

Watch this spot for more exciting stuff …