Blueshift - September, 2013

Finding Herschel

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Sara Mitchell: Welcome to Blueshift, brought to you from NASA's Goddard 
Space Flight Center.  I'm Sara Mitchell.

Back in July, astronomer Nick Howes wrote a guest post for us about how 
he was able to image the Herschel spacecraft, even though it was a 
million miles away from Earth near what astronomers call the L2 point. 
In this podcast, we got the backstory on how he found Herschel, the 
equipment he used to do it, as well as a bit about his background and 
what drew him to astronomy.

Maggie Masetti: Thanks for joining us, Nick! How did you decide to image 
the Herschel spacecraft?
 
Nick: Well the Herschel Project was interesting. That was really a last 
minute thing. I worked for the European Space Agency for a couple of 
years working in science communication on a freelance basis for them, 
and I'd done a lot of stuff initially on the Herschel Telescope. For me, 
it was great, because it really improved my domain knowledge in infrared 
astronomy and what the Herschel Telescope was all about. It was a really 
exciting project and I got to talk to all mission managers, and 
principal investigators, principal scientist, etc. A really fantastic 
team of people, and then obviously it got switched off quite recently. 
The coolant ran out in April.
 
They put it into this kind of graveyard orbit, and I thought it would be 
fun maybe to get the kids to look and this. And maybe try and image it, 
because I know that amateurs have been imaging the Herschel Space 
Telescope. And obviously regularly image the Hubble, and various other 
telescopes, and space debris in orbit as well. And a project I've been 
working on now for about two-years is kind of tied into this. It's 
called Project Snoopy. When we're looking for some of the old Apollo 
hardware. Specifically the Apollo 10 Lunar Ascent Module. Which was put 
into heliocentric orbit in 1969, and hasn't been seen since.
 
So we've had people working on data for that and try to calculate all 
sorts of positions and stuff. That's been an exciting project, and we've 
now got a ephemeris which are on the minor sensors planets website from 
1969-2030 for Snoopy. So it's just a case now of going through loads and 
loads of images and data, because right now it's just too far out for 
anyone to see apart from the James Webb. It's a mag 29.5 according to 
our calculations at the moment.
 
So we're doing a lot of stuff like that, and Herschel, the panic really 
stuck in when we looked at the JPL Horizons website. Which generates 
coordinates for these kind of spacecraft, and on their website it said 
they were going to stop generating coordinates till the end of June. And 
we thought, well, hold on. Their coordinates were doing one thing, and 
the Minor Planets Centers coordinates were doing something else. They 
weren't the same. They were kind of diverging a little bit.
 
So we thought if this is being put a heliocentric orbit, and is going to 
get fainter and fainter. There's a very good chance the spacecraft may 
not be lost, because ESA really did have a good handle on it. But we 
didn't know that. We just thought if we image it, and we get a lot of 
data on it, Then we'll be able to get a really good orbit on it, and it 
turned out it was actually a little bit more important than even we 
thought. We originally had these three different spaces from the Minor 
Planet Center at JPL, and we kind of work on it in an in-between region 
as well.
 
We only had literally an hour's worth of telescope time to try and get 
this. So we split it into three 20-minute slots, and it was lucky the 
second slot is where we got it. Because then the next slot we had after 
that, the telescopes in Siding Spring which we were going to switch to 
were rained off. Because Siding Spring's a rainforest. [Laugh] Clue's in 
the word. So that was really quite fun, and then we did the date 
reduction on that. We found something pretty much where we thought it 
was going to be, but it was out from the Minor Planet Center 
coordinates, out from the JPL coordinates.
 
So if we hadn't of done this, who knows, it could have just drifted off 
into anywhere really. But in the heliocentric orbit. So we got some more 
time the day after. We managed to get it again. So then we're building 
up a bit of an orbital track on it, and then a friend at Kitt Peak, 
Thomas, who basically had access to the 1.3 meter telescope at Kitt 
Peak. He said I'm going to hunt for it as well, and he had a much wider 
field of view than us. And even they struggled to find it on a 1.3 
meter.
 
Initially he was like, it's not there, it's not in the field. Anyway he 
then did some over reduction and he got it. At exactly where it should 
be, but by this point the magnitude, the kind of light level from the 
telescope itself would have dropped significantly. We picked it up at 
magnitude 18.9 which was inline with what the European Space Agency 
thought it would be. By the time he imaged it, it was near to mag 21. So 
thousands of times fainter, and this is due to the, we believe, due to 
the rotation of the spacecraft and some parts obviously catching the sun 
a lot better, and some parts really designed to kind of diffuse and not 
reflect the light.
 
So they had a go at it, and then we an email via twitter from guys on 
the CTIO telescope in Chile. And they said they would have a go at it, 
and they were using a .6 meter telescope. And they just about got it on 
three images that they took. And that hopefully they're going to do some 
follow on. So all the states is building up now to quite and interesting 
stack of coordinates.
 
Maggie: What would you think the minimum telescope requirement would be 
to view and object like Herschel at L2?
 
Nick: At L2 the James Webb is going to be essentially larger than 
Herschel.
 
Maggie: I mean are there other satellites out there too like WMAP and 
Planck? Are they much smaller than Herschel?
 
Nick: Yes. Planck is smaller than Herschel. Herschel is one of the 
smallest telescopes put into orbit. It's the largest single mirror 
telescope ever put into orbit. 3.5 m on the telescope mirror. Planck 
itself we could probably get with Faulkes. I would say for somebody at 
home. I'm working on the James Webb, tracking out to L2 shouldn't be too 
much of a problem. Actually at L2 you could be looking at anywhere 
between, depending on the reflectivity and such with magnitude 15, 16 
down to maybe 18-20. So it's within reach of a good size backyard 
telescope.
 
Your guys who got their kind of 10 inch, maybe even eight inch, but 
definitely 10 inch and higher Schmidt-Cassegrain and Newtonian 
telescopes with good cold sensitive cameras should be able to pick it up 
in a matter of a few minutes. One of the things with Faulkes is because 
these objects are moving, integrating and moving objects are more 
complex than a static object. If you're just imaging a star, or a 
supernova, or a quasar, or something, you can get down to really faint 
magnitude just by integrating over a long period of time, but obviously 
anything that is moving you've got less time really to integrate on the 
specific target itself.
 
You can do stacking and tracking on the object, but I'd guess an average 
backyard telescope should be able to take part in the James Webb 
Campaign.
 
Maggie: In 2018 after it launches.
 
Nick: That's the key. That's the thing. It's a good tie in as well 
because obviously the European Space Agency are doing to launch. And 
there is a lot of European instruments on the James Webb itself.
 
Maggie: Yes. It's defiantly an international project.
 
Nick: It's fantastic. So it would be great to get international 
collaboration on this.
 
Maggie: For sure.
 
Nick: Tracking it out and watching it unfurl. And that's the cool thing 
as well, because as it's unfurling the magnitudes going to be changing. 
This thing's going to be getting bigger when the sunshield deploys. It's 
going to get bigger when the mirror deploys. So that will be a really 
interesting project I think in a few years to track out.
 
Maggie: Having tracked Herschel and image Herschel, do you think that 
will help you to try to do this for JWST in 2018?
 
Nick: Yes. It's going to be substantially easier. The problem we had 
with Herschel is ESA turned off the ground communications link as well.
 
Maggie: You weren't sure precisely where you were looking?
 
Nick: Exactly. We saw these coordinates diverging. With James Webb, you 
guys are going to be tracking it. [Laugh] The telemetry is going to be 
perfect. The ephemeris should be perfect. So we should have an exact 
position to point the telescopes at, and I would guess as soon it goes 
into orbit and it starts drifting out to L2. As long as it's not too 
close to the moon, or too close to any sun direction, it shouldn't be 
obviously, we should be able to just track it all the way out.
 
Maggie: Yeah, that would be really exciting if you could image JWST the 
way that you imaged Herschel. I think that would be really cool.
 
Nick: For kids the one thing I've noticed from the Herschel Projects, 
and some of the things we do are a bit funky, and a bit left field, and 
they're not your traditional science projects. The long-term kind of 
comets and stuff, but the amount of "likes" we've had on the Facebook 
page. The James Webb Facebook page has been astonishing, and the 
feedback from Facebook, and Twitter, and all the social media channels, 
from what we did has been really nice and really remarkable.
 
So it kind of shows that people are excited about this, and this is one 
of the reasons I've wanted to try to hunt for the Apollo hardware. 
Because my age and older...
 
Maggie: Yeah Apollo is huge. Iconic.
 
Nick: Yes it is, but for younger people. They may not know about it. So 
it was kind of a way to introduce them to some fun stuff, and also the 
areas we are going to be looking in. We are going to find asteroids and 
comets anyway. It's all good for science.
 
Maggie: You mentioned Apollo - was the early space program what got you 
interested in space and astronomy? When did that begin?
 
Nick: My interest in Astronomy really started probably at the age of 
nine, in earnest. Although my parents say to me that from the age of 
three I was banging on an old television when Apollo 17 was on the moon.
 
[Laugh]
 
And it's quite bizarre that the day that I was born was the day that 
Apollo 12, Alan Bean, was doing one of his famous moon walks. So I don't 
know, maybe there is some kind of history in it there, but then I 
remember watching Viking in the 70's and being completely enthralled by 
that. And my parents used to let me stay up and watch a famous TV show 
called the Sky at Night, which was hosted by a man called Sir Patrick 
Moore. Who eventually became my planetary science teacher at University, 
when I studied astrophysics.
 
So that was kind of nice, but then at the age of nine my grandmother 
bought me a telescope and a book on space. And that was it really. It 
was all I wanted to do, and all I nagged my teachers all through high 
school that I wanted to do was become and astronomer and astrophysicist. 
It's kind of weird, because the other thing I was really passionate 
about in my life was music. So they both... It's one of those things 
with astronomers that seems to be very common. You've got Brian May 
obviously in Queen. He's a very famous musician, and Brian Cox as well. 
[Laugh] So it's so weird.
 
Maggie: Yeah, I'm in a band as well. It is a music and astronomy thing.
 
Nick: It is strange. I finished high school, then I went to technical 
college, and then I went to University and studied astrophysics, and 
then after that to clear my student debts, roped into working in a music 
store selling synthesizer and musical instruments, and on the back of 
that I was offered a world tour with a pop group called Ultravox. Who 
were quite famous, and they played at Live Aid and some huge gigs. So I 
was with them for a few years.
 
Maggie: That's very cool.
 
Nick: In about 1999. My then girlfriend who is now my wife said. "Okay, 
what are you thinking of doing?" Because I was thinking of going back to 
college, and I said 'Well I want to do a Master's Degree." So I did a 
master's degree in acoustics and audio, and she said, "Well ,if you 
graduate. I'll buy you a proper telescope." So that was it, and then 
basically after graduation she got me a telescope. And that just 
rekindled the whole thing again
 
Maggie: That sounds really great. We recently did a blog post about you 
are imaging the Herschel spacecraft. So can you tell us a little bit 
about the telescopes you use? Because I assume it wasn't a backyard 
telescope to image something as far away as L2...
 
Nick: Around about 2009-2010, I got involved via a friend with the 
Faulkes telescope. And the Faulkes telescopes is a project run by the 
Las Cumbras Observatory Global Telescope Network. They have now 
basically taken over the management of these two huge telescopes and 
they're building a whole slew more, but originally this was set up by an 
English guy called Dil Faulkes around about ten years ago. He was 
looking at science education and ways to make it better, and he 
basically put down a lot his own money to build two almost Hubble size 
telescopes. One of which is on the top of Haleakala in Hawaii, right 
next to the Panstarrs Survey Telescope.
 
That's Faulkes telescope north, and Faulkes telescope south is at the 
Siding Springs Observatory. Which is again a great location, and we got 
these two two-meter telescopes which are fully robotically controlled. 
The idea was that it was set up for schools and education in the UK, 
because when it's daytime here. School hours here, it's nighttime in 
those two locations. So what the school kids were able to do, is they 
can get an account by the school. They are all going by the Internet. 
They can book time on these telescopes, and it's completely free of 
charge. That's the amazing thing about it. The kids kind of look at this 
and they have these eight-million dollar telescopes, and they're going 
to damage them or break them. Half the time teacher's are more afraid 
than the kids. The kids just love it.
 
Maggie: I bet they do! So, last question for you, going back to Herschel 
- how much longer do you expect to see it? Do you think it will be 
observable for a while longer?
 
Nick: It should be for a while longer. We are estimating for a couple of 
months to three months. It's dropping in brightness. It's moving away, I 
believe, at about 200 meters per second. Into this graveyard orbit. It's 
going to come back in around 2027-28, and our estimates put it at about 
magnitude 21.7 then.
 
So by that point 21.7 shouldn't be that tricky. CCD cameras are getting 
better all the time. Telescopes are getting better. You're going to have 
the large synoptic sky surveys. The OWL, the overwhelmingly large 
telescope. James Webb will obviously be able to image all sorts of stuff 
down, I think John Mather said mag 32. Which is just, you would kill for 
that capability. There's going to be some remarkable instruments over 
the coming years. So we should be able to pick it back up when it comes 
back around, and hopefully for the next few months at least get a really 
good orbital track on it. So by the time it does come back we are not 
guessing where it is. We know exactly where it is. Nobody picks it up 
and thinks it's an asteroid.
 
 Sara: That's it for this time. Thanks to Nick for talking to us and 
thank to you for listening. Be sure to check out our blog at 
universe.nasa.gov/Blueshift for some pictures associated with this 
podcast, and you'll also find all of our previous podcasts and blogs. 
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Tell us what you'd like to hear about there, or through our website 
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