Planck Satellite Releases First Images 59
davecl writes "The Planck Satellite has released its first images. These are from the 'First Look Survey' and show a strip of the sky scanned at a range of radio and submillimetre wavelengths. The results are already better than what was seen by the previous microwave background satellite, WMAP. More details and images available in English and French. The Planck Mission Blog contains more details of the project and continuing coverage. I maintain the mission blog but even I am impressed with these first images!"
Re:From TFA (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps a badger would be better.
Re:Am I hopelessly geeky... (Score:3, Informative)
Planck is actually an ESA mission, not NASA. Though our US colleagues have made significant contributions the bulk of the funding, the launch etc. has come from Europe.
Re:I wish they'd post a bit of the sky from both.. (Score:4, Informative)
There's a lot more to do beyond Planck on polarization, but you're right that primary intensity anisotropies in the CMB will essentially be done by Planck. There are lots of secondary anisotropies, such as the SZ-Effect, on smaller scales to be done at higher resolution, though, and instruments like the SPT [uchicago.edu] are doing exactly that.
Re:Plancks Scan Pattern Is Bad? (Score:4, Informative)
The poles of the scan are actually the ecliptic poles, perpendicular to the plane of the planets within the solar system. This is set by the fact that Planck rotates with it's bottom pointing towards the line that joins the earth and the sun from it's position at the second Lagrange point. This ensures that earth and sunlight never impinge on it's sensitive detectors and helps to keep the whole instrument as cold as possible. The scan geometry is thus quite tightly restricted by these requirements and, as you say, the deepest fields will be at the ecliptic poles.
We actually don't want to study the centre of the galaxy with Planck as the galaxy is the major foreground contaminant to the CMB data. Fortunately the eclptic poles aren't aligned wiht the centre of the galaxy.