Planck Unveils the Universe -- Now and Then

Planck Takes It All In

This image of the microwave sky was created using data spanning the range of light frequencies detected by Planck. Image credit: ESA, HFI & LFI consortia (2010)

A original image from the Planck mission shows what it's been up to for the precedent year -- surveying the whole sky for clues to our worldwide origins. Planck, a European Space Agency mission with important contribution from NASA, has been busily scanning the whole sky at nine frequencies of light, with the final goal of separating fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background -- or light from the commencement of time. These fluctuations symbolize the seeds from which organization in our universe evolved.

"This microwave sky image shows both our Milky Way galaxy and the universe 380,000 years following the Big Bang in one open view," said Charles Lawrence, the NASA advance scientist for the mission at the Jet onward motion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The radiation from the Milky Way traveled hundreds or thousands of years to reach us, while the emission from the early universe traveled 13.7 billion years to reach us. What we see in this picture come about at very dissimilar times."

This image has been color-coded to show how the sky looks over the variety of frequencies experiential by Planck. Planck detects light that we can't see with our eyes -- light with low frequencies ranging from 30 to 857 gigahertz. The disk of the Milky Way galaxy, seen edge-on from Earth's perspective, is the bright band running flat down the middle. Diffuse, huge clouds of gas and dust relatively close to us in our galaxy can be seen above and below this band. The cosmic microwave background is apparent as the grainy structure towards the top and bottom of the image.

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