This week, Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing a special feature devoted to the first science results obtained with Herschel, an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led Principal Investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA. It includes 152 articles dealing with various subjects based on the first few months of science observing. A few papers describe the observatory and its instruments, and the rest are dedicated to observations of many astronomical targets from bodies in the Solar System to distant galaxies.
Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing new 3D maps of the interstellar gas in the local area around our Sun. A French-American team of astronomers presents new absorption measurements towards more than 1800 stars. They were able to characterize the properties of the interstellar gas within each sight line.
This week, Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing a special feature devoted to the new results obtained with the infrared satellite AKARI, a JAXA project with the participation of ESA. It includes 17 articles dealing with various subjects. Some papers are based on the AKARI all-sky survey, which has just been released. Others are dedicated to pointed observations of many astronomical targets from solar system bodies to distant galaxies.