Europe's Herschel space observatory is set to become one of the most powerful tools ever to study the Universe.
欧盟的赫歇尔天文台被设定成为研究宇宙的最强大的工具之一。
wavelengths="" visible="" at="" eye="" the="" of="" image="" s="" src="http://www.enread.com/upimg/090711/4_062612_1.jpg" />The "first light" data from its three instruments demonstrates a remarkable capability even though their set-up is still not complete.
Galaxy images released on Friday by the European Space Agency show detail previously unseen in the objects.
The pictures - and the thousands that will follow - should give new insights on star formation and galaxy evolution.
"We have some excellent images; they're not calibrated（校准）, but they look spectacular（惊人的）," said Dr Göran Pilbratt, Esa's Herschel project scientist.
"They tell you we are working; it's just fantastic," he told BBC News.
Different view
Herschel is sensitive to light at long wavelengths - in the far-infrared（远红外线） and sub-millimetre range (55 to 672 microns).
Observations at these longer wavelengths do not produce the "pretty pictures" obtained at shorter wavelengths, such as the visible light detected by the famous Hubble telescope.
What they can do, however, is see features in celestial（天上的） objects that are invisible to Hubble; and with Herschel's giant 3.5m mirror, the detail becomes extremely rich.
Friday's release includes the first two galaxy observations using the European telescope's SPIRE (Spectral（波谱的） and Photometric（光度测定的） Imaging Receiver) instrument.
SPIRE has pictured M74 (also known as NGC 628), a face-on spiral（正向旋涡星系） galaxy located about 24 million light-years from Earth in the constellation（星座，星群） Pisces; and M66 (also known as NGC 3627), a barred spiral galaxy located about 36 million light-years away in the constellation Leo.
What Herschel sees in these objects is not their stars but the dusty clouds of gas that give rise to stars.
Herschel was despatched into space along with Esa's Planck telescope on 14 May.
Over the course of the past two months, both astronomical（天文学的） satellites have been moving to observation positions some 1.5 million km from Earth, on its "night side".
The long journey has been used by engineers to switch on and check out all of the telescopes' systems.
This past week, a major review of the observatories' status was held in Darmstadt, Germany. The meeting marked the formal handover of the facilities from the industrial manufacturers - a pan-European industrial consortium（联合，合伙） led by Thales Alenia Space.
"We're now going to start to tune the instruments for maximum performance," explained Dr Pilbratt. "We're going to try them out in many different observing situations in order to learn how to get the best out of them."
This verification period will then be followed by a six-week demonstration phase in which the operations team hope to show the world the full power of a perfectly prepared, fully mature Herschel space observatory.
Routine operations should begin towards the end of the year.
Herschel is expected to continue working through to 2013, by which time the super-fluid helium（氦） that keeps its instruments and detectors in the necessary ultra-cold state to make observations will have boiled off.