“Planck has been a wonderful mission; spacecraft and instruments have
been performing outstandingly well, creating a treasure trove of
scientific data for us to work with,” said Jan Tauber, ESA’s Planck
Project Scientist.
Less than half a million years after the Universe was created in the
Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, the fireball cooled to temperatures
of about 4000ºC, filling the sky with bright, visible light. As the
Universe has expanded, that light has faded and moved to microwave
wavelengths. By studying patterns imprinted in that light today,
scientists hope to understand the Big Bang and the very early
Universe, long before galaxies and stars first formed.
Planck has been measuring these patterns by surveying the whole sky
with its High Frequency Instrument (HFI) and its Low Frequency
Instrument (LFI). Combined, they give Planck unparalleled wavelength
coverage and the ability to resolve faint details. Launched in May
2009, the minimum requirement for success was for the spacecraft to
complete two whole surveys of the sky. In the end, Planck worked
perfectly for 30 months, about twice the span originally required, and
completed five full-sky surveys with both instruments.
Able to work at slightly higher temperatures than HFI, the LFI will
continue surveying the sky for a large part of 2012, providing
calibration data to improve the quality of the final results. Planck
sees not only the primordial microwaves from the Big Bang but also the
emission from cold dust throughout the Universe.
Initial results from Planck were announced last year. These include a
catalogue of galaxy clusters in the distant Universe, many of which
had not been seen before and included some gigantic ‘superclusters’ –
probably merging clusters. Another highlight from the initial results
was the best measurement yet of an infrared background covering the
sky, produced by stars forming in the early Universe. This showed how
some of the first galaxies were producing a thousand times more stars
every year than our own Galaxy does today.
More results from Planck will be announced next month, but the first
results on the Big Bang and very early Universe will not come for
another year. Extremely careful and painstaking analysis of the data
is needed to remove all of the contaminating foreground emission and
tease out the faintest, most subtle signals in the remnant
emission. The Big Bang data will be released in two stages, the first
15.5 months’ worth in early 2013, and then the full data release from
the entire mission a year after that.
For more information:
http://www.esa.int/export/esaSC/SEMXWNMXDXG_index_0.html
Contact:
Markus Bauer
ESA Science and Robotic Exploration Communication Officer
Tel: +31 71 565 6799
Mob: +31 61 594 3 954
E-mail: markus.baueresa.int
Torsten Enßlin
MPA Planck Project Scientists
Tel. 089 30000-2243
E-mail: tensslinmpa-garching.mpg.de
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