Herschel observatory: HIFI is on!

[Biggins]

In the last couple of days, the redundant electronics for the HIFI instrument were switched on successfully. Although there are still some functional tests on some of the sub-units (being executed today) everything looks nominal and behaving as expected!

Herscehl: http://www.esa.int/esaSC/120390_index_0_m.html
HIFI: http://www.sron.nl/index.php?option=com ... Itemid=944

[solrey]

Congratulations to Biggins and the entire Herschel team!

Looking forward to the coming data and discoveries.

Will ya let us know if anything "interesting" shows up?

[Biggins]

The HIFI project confirms that HIFI is back in business!

The instrument checks out ans will begin taking science data from the beginning of March 2010! So Herschel is fully operational with a full set of instruments.

[mharratsc]

I finally got around to following the link to the HIFI page. What an instrument package!

I think we're going to be seeing some very interesting discoveries from HIFI and Herschel both!

Should at least start a few arguments in certain mainstream circles at any rate, I'd wager...

[jjohnson]

ESA also has another solar observing satellite going, too, with cool movies.
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMYNUKOP4G_in ... l#subhead7
and an instrument to monitor plasma flux (graphs shown of sample electron/ion counts and temperetures)
Jim

[RayTomes]

Years ago I heard a guy talk about infrared objects that were supposedly already discovered in the outer reaches of the solar system. I am interested to see whether this will show up. I think that there are good reasons to believe that there will be many objects between the solar system and the nearest stars. These will be below red dwarfs, brown dwarfs etc but probably bigger than planets. I predict that such objects will be at distances apart consistent with harmonics theory. Let me explain.

The nearby stars are commonly located at distances apart of 4.44, 5.9, 7.1, 8.88, 9.6, 11.8 light years and other distances that correspond in light years to the commonly reported cycles in years found in all phenomena on Earth and reported by Edward Dewey and the Foundation for the Study of Cycles. Looking at Dewey's table of cycles we might expect common distances between dimmer (i.e. IR) objects to be 0.33, 0.495, 0.66, 0.99, 1.485, 1.98 light years and other harmonically related values.

Working the other way from the solar system, the outer planets favour distances that are multiples or fractions of 5, 10, 20, 60, 120 AU (astronomical units) and I would expect this sequence to continue and to be representative of distance scales between IR objects.

[MrAmsterdam]

Well, the first results of HIFI are in. Check out this discovery;

Ionised watergas in abundance

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object ... ctid=46983

What are your perspective on this discovery gentlemen?