The PLANCK first year survey map of the Galactic emission

Planck unveils the Universe – now and then
 

The microwave sky as seen by Planck
 
From ESA Media Relations Office
Communication Department
5 July 2010
ESA PR-15 2010 ESA’s Planck mission has delivered its first all-sky image. It not only provides  new   insight  into  the  way  stars and galaxies form but also tells us how the Universe itself came to life after the Big Bang. 
 
“This is the moment that Planck was conceived for,” says ESA Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, David Southwood.  “We’re not giving the answer.  We are opening the door to an Eldorado where scientists can seek the nuggets that will lead to deeper understanding of how  our Universe came to be and how it works now.  The image itself and its  remarkable quality is a tribute to the engineers who built  and have operated Planck.  Now the scientific harvest must begin.  ” From  the  closest  portions  of the Milky Way to the furthest reaches of space and time, the new all-sky Planck image is an extraordinary treasure chest of new data for astronomers.  
   
The main  disc of our Galaxy runs across the centre of the image. Immediately striking are the streamers of cold dust reaching above and below the Milky Way. This  galactic  web is where new  stars are being formed, and Planck has found many locations where individual stars are edging toward birth or just beginning their cycle of development. Less spectacular but perhaps more intriguing is the mottled backdrop at the top and bottom.  This is  the ‘cosmic microwave background radiation’ (CMBR). It is the oldest  light  in  the  Universe,  the  remains  of  the  fireball out of which our Universe sprang into existence 13.7 billion years ago. 
 
While the  Milky Way shows us what the local Universe looks like now, those microwaves show us what  the Universe looked like close to its time of creation, before there were stars or galaxies.  Here we come to the heart of Planck’s mission to decode what happened in that primordial Universe from the  pattern of the mottled backdrop. The microwave pattern  is  the cosmic blueprint from which today’s clusters and superclusters of galaxies  were built. The different colours represent minute differences in the temperature and density of matter across the sky. Somehow these small irregularities evolved into denser regions that became the galaxies of today.
 
The  CMBR covers the entire sky but most of it is  hidden in this image by the Milky Way’s emission, which must be digitally removed from the final data in order to see the microwave background in its entirety. When this work is completed, Planck will show us the most precise picture of the microwave  background  ever obtained. The big question will be whether the data  will reveal  the cosmic signature of the primordial period called inflation. This era is postulated to have taken place just after the Big Bang and resulted in the Universe expanding enormously in size over an extremely short period.
 
Planck continues to map the Universe. By the end of its mission in 2012, it will have completed  four all-sky scans. The first full data release of the CMBR is planned for 2012.  Before then, the catalogue containing individual objects in our Galaxy and whole distant galaxies will be released in January 2011.  “This image is just a glimpse of what Planck will ultimately see,” says Jan Tauber, ESA’s Planck Project Scientist.
 
For further information, please contact:
ESA Media Relations Office
Communication Department
Tel: + 33 1 5369 7299
Fax: + 33 1 5369 7690
Contacts:
Jan Tauber, ESA Planck Project Scientist
 
Science and Robotic Exploration Directorate,
ESA, The Netherlands
 
Email: jtauber@rssd.esa.int
 
Tel: +31 71 565 5342