A giant European Space Agency space telescope with a 3.5-meter-diameter main mirror (by comparison, the Hubble Space Telescope's is only 2.4 meters across) designed to observe the universe in unprecedented detail at far infrared and submillimeter wavelengths, from 80 to 670 microns, and to carry out sensitive photometry and spectroscopy. Herschel will be launched together with Planck in early 2007. Once in space, the two satellites will separate and proceed to different orbits around the second Lagrangian point, some 1.5 million km from Earth. The observatory is named after William Herschel.
