"Scheduled on 6 May from Kourou, the launch of the Herschel and Planck space observatories, in this International Year of Astronomy, will be a key moment for the European Space Agency. The spacecraft constitute together the most important space science programme that ESA has ever undertaken. The two missions, observing in different wavelengths, will complete the observations of other space and ground observatories, helping to draw up a complete picture of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Space Astronomy, getting the Big Picture
Format 16:9
This A & B-Roll including interviews (in English and in Italian) with Professor Giovanni Bignami, leading figure in the field of space-based astronomy and with Arvind Parmar, Mission Manager for ESA's XMM- Newton, focuses on the scientific advances that can be expected with Herschel and Planck and explains how work is achieved in space by analysing the different light rays, visible or not.
For more info on this subject please check the script that is online as a PDF file und

Space astronomy, getting the ""Big Picture""
Program start: 10:00:00
10:00:38
In this International Year of Astronomy, celebrating the first 400 years of modern astronomy, the European Space Agency is launching two spacecraft which will reveal even more of the invisible Universe - two machines which would truly astound Galileo Galilei.
10:01:01
The Academy of the Lynx, founded in Padua Italy in 1606, is the oldest scientific academy in the world. One of its first members was Galileo, whose improvements to the telescope and subsequent observations were to revolutionise astronomy.
10:01:19
Man had been looking at the stars with his naked eye for some 4000 years. What Galileo saw with his lenses was still solely in the visible - in fact just a fraction of the electromagnetic radiation which we know today is all around us.
10:01:37
Clip Arvind PARMAR, Integral and XMM-Newton Mission Manager, ESA
""The electromagnetic spectrum goes from the radio, with the longest wavelength, a wavelength of metres, all the way to th