The ESAC Enigma 05 - Herschel Mystery Cache
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Saludos,
TeamRMRC
The ESAC Enigma 05 - Herschel
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Size: 
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ESAC
The European Space Astronomy Centre is the home of ESA’s astrophysics and planetary missions, the place from where science operations are conducted and where all of the scientific data are archived.
To briefly describe what happens at ESAC, after launch the scientific operations are handed to the satellite's Science Operations Centre (SOC) based at ESAC. Each satellite (mission) has a dedicated SOC team who's job is to manage the mechanism of requesting observations, plan and schedule these observations, generate operational commands for the satellite, receive, process and calibrate the scientific data often sending it for further processing to collaborating institutes and finally making the data available either in a public archive or to the individual or team who requested it. Regardless of who requested it, after a fixed time (often one year) the data are made freely available to the public, so anyone can use it to better understand the universe, our solar system, our neighbouring planets or the planet on which we live.
The various SOC teams comprise astrophysicists, planetary scientists and engineers who specialise in astrophysics, scientific software, spacecraft operations, satellite instrumentation & communication and the various technical aspects of operating a scientific satellite and distributing its data. As each scientific satellite is unique no two processes or procedures are alike and each SOC develops differently as it's built around the scientific requirements of the individual satellite.
These are your satellites! Although they are designed, built, launched and operated by the Agency, it is you who tell the SOC of an orbiting observatory what the satellite should observe. If you have a need for science data, can scientifically justify the requirement and if it can be fulfilled using any currently operational satellite the Agency will observe it for you and give you the data. Yes, you!
The Catch
You won't need to be a rocket scientist to solve the puzzles in this series!
To answer some of the questions, however, you will need to:
- read English well enough to understand this page (all of the Agency's scientific output is in English) (sorry!)
- read (parts of) scientific documents in various file formats
- watch a powerpoint presentation or video
- find scientific data that is made available to the public by each SOC
- do lots and lots of googling
Do not believe everything you read in wikipedia and please be aware that the English & Spanish wikipedia entries often contain different data. If you have to choose between information on wikipedia or information on one of the many ESA websites, trust ESA.
Herschel
At the time of writing, the Herschel Space Observatory was the largest infrared space observatory ever launched. Herschel was launched in 2009 using the same rocket as the Planck observatory, then travelled for approximately 50 days to reach it's operational orbit around the second Lagrange point (L2).
Water vapour in the Earth's atmosphere absorbs radiation across large parts of the infrared and sub-millimetre wavebands, making ground based observations impossible, so satellites such as Herschel must be launched if we wish to understand our universe in these wavelengths.
Thanks to the 3.5 metre diameter reflecting telescope and instruments that were cooled to almost absolute zero, Herschel observed at wavelengths that had never previously been explored.
Hopefully, you'll discover more about this satellite and it's observations while solving this puzzle.
The Puzzle
The Herschel telescope used a 3.5m mirror, shaded by the solar array, to reflect light into several instruments whose detectors needed to be cooled to a temperature of less than 2K (almost absolute zero). At the time of writing Herschel's 3.5 meter mirror is the largest mirror ever launched into space, although unlike most mirrors, it was not made of glass it was made of silicon carbide due to this material's thermal properties. During manufacture the mirror moved across Europe several times, after being cast and ground in France, it moved to Finland for polishing by specialists. The polishing is required to reduce the surface errors as much as possible as observatory mirrors must be accurately parabolic to function correctly. The "lapping" process was performed using steel and diamond tools. The grain size of the diamond (in μm) = A.
Herschel and Planck were launched together and with a combined weight of around 9 tonnes, only Arianspace's "Ariane 5" heavy lift solution could achieve this. Arianespace is a pan-european company owned and operated by different companies, organisations & institutions across 10 different European countries. The Ariane 5 launcher is a huge rocket capable of lifting over 10 tonnes to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) and over 20 tonnes to low earth orbit (LEO). It may be hard to believe, but Arianespace produces a "User Guide" for their products, including this 780 tonne rocket. Some "Launch vehicle general data" is included which gives an overview of the launcher. The mean thrust in a vacuum (in kN) of the Solid Rocket Boosters (EAP) = B.
Herschel was placed in an orbit around a point in space known as Lagrange Point 2 (L2). At the Lagrange points the gravitation effects of the planet and the sun combine to create a stable position from which to make observations, the Sun and Earth have 5 Lagrange points generally known as L1 - L5. The L2 point is 1.5 million Km from Earth in a line directly away from the sun and is at the point where the gravity from the sun plus the gravity of the earth together balance the centrifugal force at that point. Herschel was place in an orbit around this point in space. The year of birth of the physicist who discovered and defined the points L1, L2 & L3 = C.
After commissioning of the onboard instruments the Herschel SOC team proposed a test observation and chose as a target the famous "Whirlpool Galaxy". The test observation was undertaken on 14th June 2009. The whirlpool galaxy is a stunning target and, although it is often now referred to by it's NGC number, it's original name was a combination of the name of it's discoverer followed by a number. This number = D.
One of the instruments on board Herschel is the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI), a very high resolution heterodyne spectrometer capable of producing extremely detailed spectra of the atoms and molecules from stars and galaxies. Due to the difficulty in building instruments that can measure far-infrared and sub-millimetre radiation, the detectors are a hybrid of conventional electronics and quantum electronics. The instrument mixes the frequency of the photons from the observed target with a generated frequency, resulting in a lower frequency signal which is easier to resolve. The frequencies are divided into 7 bands (1-5, 6L & 6H) with each band filtering a frequency range. The upper frequency (in GHz) of mixer band 3 = E.
Each mission will usually produce mission-specific software to assist users in processing the data and is written by a team of software engineers mostly within each SOC at ESAC. Herschel also produced a series of video tutorials to assist users in understanding their Herschel Interactive Processing Environment (HIPE) software and made them available on YouTube and via the SOC's website. Approximately half way through the "HIPE quick start guide" video the video zooms in on the "Outline" tab of the HIPE user interface and it is possible to see the sample Observation Id being used in the demo (obsid_XXXX). This ten digit number (XXXX) = F.
The HIPE software was modified regularly and new releases made available throughout the mission's lifespan, and such software releases generally improve the software and fixed bugs. Version 10.0 of HIPE optimised the registration and initialisation of tasks within the software, with the potential to significantly improve the startup time of the HIPE software itself. The claimed reduction of HIPE start-up time (as a %) = G.
When publishing papers that are based on science data provided by one of the Agency's satellites, authors are often required to acknowledge the satellite and/or the Agency. Herschel, for example, states that authors must include a mandatory footnote at the bottom of the first page. The number of letters in the first word of the Herschel mandatory footnote = H.
The Cache
Once you have values for A-H:
J: Divide B by 1000: B/1000 = J.
K: Reduce C to a single digit using the usual technique (eg, 16: 1+6=7). This single digit = K.
L: Reduce D to a single digit using the usual technique (eg, 16: 1+6=7). This single digit = L.
M: Reduce E to a single digit using the usual technique (eg, 16: 1+6=7). This single digit = M.
N: Reduce F to a single digit using the usual technique (eg, 16: 1+6=7). This single digit = N.
The cache can be found at:
N 40° 26. (M+1) (N-2) (G-A)
W 003° 57. (L-6) (J-K) (H-6)
Good luck!
You can check your result here:
The Enigma
In each cache in this series there is a plastic bag containing cards labelled "Enigma".
When you find a cache in this series please take and keep one of the "Enigma" cards.
You will need all 7 "Enigma" cards from each cache in this series to find the eighth and final cache.
** The initial contents of the final cache in this series include a few ESA items, such as Agency pens, mission buttons & stickers, NASA Apollo cachets and a few other space related items.
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)