Artist's conception of the faring, or covering, falling away from the rocket that launched the space observatories Herschel and Planck, allowing them to separate. The rocket was launched from French Guiana in May 2009, and both observatories reached the L2 point in July of that year. Herschel, an extremely sensitive infrared telescope, was designed to sift through otherwise invisible star-forming clouds, tracing the path by which stars and galaxies are formed. Planck's objective is to survey the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the radiation left over from the Big Bang.