Seeing the stolen starlight with Herschel

The Herschel Space Observatory is ESA’s fourth Cornerstone mission and will be the largest, most sensitive telescope ever put into space. It will be the first space observatory to observe from the far-infrared to the submillimetre waveband, unveiling the cool, hidden universe for the first time. Herschel will observe stars and galaxies at the stage of formation and discover where all the cosmic dust polluting galaxies comes from. Given the huge public interest in large space missions such as Hubble and Spitzer, Herschel is an ideal opportunity to excite and inform the UK public during the International Year of Astronomy 2009. Here we present some of the education and outreach projects created by the Herschel Outreach Group (HOG).