Herschel - the biggest space telescope ever
ESA TV Exchanges
With its 3,5 meter mirror and cryogenic science payload, the Herschel Space Observatory will deliver unprecedented images and spectra of very cool, distant, and poorly known objects in the universe. As the first of a new generation of space telescopes, Herschel will be studying stars being born in our own Galaxy, the evolution of newborn galaxies billions of light-years away, and primitive objects dating from the formation of our own solar system. Herschel will provide unprecedented sensitivity and resolution, thanks to the largest mirror ever used in space and three instruments with detectors kept at temperatures close to absolute zero.
The script is online as a PDF file under http://television.esa.int/photos/EbS49188.pdf
A WMV preview clip is online under http://esatv-movies.e-vision.nl/videos/mphi/Herschel_27-02-07_wmphigh.wmv
A broadcast quality Mpeg-2 file (ca 975 MB) is online. To get a userid and password for ftp-download of ESA footage,

The Herschel Space Telescope
A-Roll
10:00:36 (Images of the infrared universe) The universe still carries pictures of the first stars and galaxies. Many of these images lie outside the scope of human vision ñ in whatís known as the invisible universe ñ and can only be seen with specialised technology.
Much of the early universe was relatively cold, and emitted light with a greater wavelength than the visible spectrum ñ this is known as infrared. This radiation is not scattered by dust and gas in the same way as visible light, and it can show scientists how stars and galaxies were formed.
10:01:12 SOT Professor Giovanni Bignami, Chairman of ESAís Space Science Advisory Committee [Italian with English V/O] ""We have wanted to conduct infrared astronomy for a long time, but itís very difficult from the Earth as the water vapour in the atmosphere prevents this. This is why infrared telescopes have to be in satellites.""
10:01:26 (GVs Herschel in the cleanroom, images of the infrare