The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
The panel below shows an overlay of individual spectra of the nitrogen line, all taken simultaneously with the PACS spectrometer, on the dust continuum as observed with the PACS photometer.
The width of these spectral lines can be used to determine the speed of the gas.
These very first data are of unprecedented sensitivity, accurately tracing the physical conditions in cold and warm gas. The next step is to supplement these first results with data from other atomic species to build up a picture of how the gaseous and dusty structures are shaped further out.