Herschel and Planck

[xYlvax]

It looks like fire. Beautiful

[brlesq1]

Wow. Fantabulous.

[thefinalfrontier]

This is going to interesting to see the Orion thru Herschels eyes,

Herschel readies itself for the Orion Nebula

19 January 2010

ESA’s Herschel observatory is back to full operation following the reactivation of its HIFI instrument. HIFI, having been offline for 160 days while engineers investigated an unexpected problem in the electronic system, is now perfectly placed to resume its study of forming stars and planets.

HIFI, the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared, was built specifically to observe water in a variety of celestial objects. Its first observation, on 22 June 2009, showed that it was performing beyond its design specification. However, by 3 August 2009, something was clearly wrong and the instrument team and ESA had to decide what to do.

Herschel is stationed 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, directly away from the Sun, and way out of the reach of astronauts. “With Herschel we can’t just go up there and fix it, we have to nurse it back to health,” says David Southwood, ESA’s Director of Science and Robotic Exploration. That nursing took 160 days of concentrated effort from an expert team of engineers.

Firstly, the decision was made to shut down the instrument and begin a ‘forensic’ investigation to discover what had caused the problem. By December, it was apparent that an electronic component called the Local Oscillator Control Unit (LCU) had been damaged by an unexpected voltage surge, probably the result of a cosmic ray having interfered with an onboard computer.

Full Article Here

[thefinalfrontier]

Dust has never looked so beautiful! This new image from the Planck spacecraft shows giant filaments of cold dust stretching through our galaxy. The image spans about 50 degrees of the sky, showing our local neighborhood within approximately 500 light-years of the Sun.“What makes these structures have these particular shapes is not well understood,” says Jan Tauber, ESA Project Scientist for Planck. Analyzing these structures could help to determine the forces that shape our galaxy and trigger star formation.

Read more...

awsome pictures from Plank and more to come,

The red box shows the region of sky seen in the new Planck image; it covers a portion of the sky about 55°. The background image is a globe representing half the sky as imaged by the IRAS satellite at 100 micrometres. Credits: ESA/IRAS

[thefinalfrontier]

Infrared image of the Rosette molecular cloud by the Herschel space observatory. Credits: ESA/PACS & SPIRE Consortium/HOBYS Key Programme Consortia

Wow, what a gorgeous new image from the Herschel telescope – and what makes this especially stunning is that we've never seen these stars before! And these stars in the Rosette Nebula are huge, as each one is up to ten times the mass of our Sun. “High-mass star-forming regions are rare and further away than low-mass ones,” said Frédérique Motte, from the Laboratoire AIM Paris-Saclay, France. "So astronomers have had to wait for a space telescope like Herschel to reveal them."

The Rosette Nebula is about 5,000 light years from Earth. Each color shown in the image represents a different temperature of dust, from –263 C (only 10C above absolute zero) in the red emission to –233 C in the blue.

The bright smudges are dusty cocoons hiding massive protostars, which will eventually become equally large stars, still about ten times the mass of the Sun. The small spots near the center and in the redder regions of the image are lower mass protostars, similar in mass to the Sun.

The image shows about half of the nebula and most of the Rosette cloud. The Herschel space observatory is able to peer through the dust and gas to see what is invisible to our eyes. The image was created using observations from Herschel’s Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) and the Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE).

We can look forward to learning about the first scientific results from Herschel, presented by Dr. Motte, at a symposium hosted on May 4-7, 2010 in the Netherlands by the ESA, the ESLAB symposium.

Source: ESA

http://www.universetoday.com/2010/04/12/herschel-spots-previously-unseen-stars-in-rosette-nebula/

Edited April 13, 2010 by thefinalfrontier

[chaoszerg]

That picture is awesome.

[thefinalfrontier]

That picture is awesome.

Sure is beautiful huh Chaoszerg, That photo was taken by the Herecial spacecraft which was launched just a year ago, Im certian theres much more to come from Herciasl amd Planck

Edited April 13, 2010 by thefinalfrontier

[chaoszerg]

Sure is beautiful huh Chaoszerg, That photo was taken by the Herecial spacecraft which was launched just a year ago, Im certian theres much more to come from Herciasl amd Planck

It is very beautiful and I look forward to more stuff.

[2of7]

An active star-formation region in the Orion Nebula, as seen By Planck. This image covers a region of 13x13 degrees. It is a three-colour combination constructed from three of Planck's nine frequency channels: 30, 353 and 857 GHz.

Source: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM0FVF098G_index_1.html

New images from ESA’s Planck space observatory reveal the forces driving star formation and give astronomers a way to understand the complex physics that shape the dust and gas in our Galaxy.

Star formation takes place hidden behind veils of dust but that doesn’t mean we can’t see through them. Where optical telescopes see only black space, Planck’s microwave eyes reveal myriad glowing structures of dust and gas. Now, Planck has used this ability to probe two relatively nearby star-forming regions in our Galaxy.

Full article: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM0FVF098G_index_0.html

A low activity, star-formation region in the constellation Perseus, as seen with Planck. This image covers a region of 30x30 degrees. It is a three-colour combination constructed from three of Planck's nine frequency channels: 30, 353 and 857 GHz.

Source: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM0FVF098G_index_1.html#subhead1

Planck site: http://planck.cf.ac.uk/

Edited April 26, 2010 by 2of7

[thefinalfrontier]

Good to see it up and working so well, Herciel has returned some awsome stuff too,

Edited April 26, 2010 by thefinalfrontier

[thefinalfrontier]

Just days before the first anniversary of the Herschel space observatory's launch, the first full science results – along with some very pretty images – were released at a symposium in the Netherlands. "Herschel is a new eye on a part of the cosmos that has been dark and buried for a long time," said the mission's NASA project scientist, Paul Goldsmith at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Above, Herschel's observation of the star-forming cloud RCW 120 has revealed not only the huge blue bubble of gas, but also the small white spot is what some astronomers have called an "impossible" star.

Read more...

Herschel one year after launch,

The galactic bubble RCW 120. Image credit: ESA/PACS/SPIRE/HOBYS Consortia

A region the the galactic center in the Eagle constellation. Credits: ESA/Hi-GAL Consortium

[S2F]

The universe can create art much more profound than any human ever could. Thanks for sharing TFF.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Herschel reveals the hidden side of star birth

RCW 120 is a galactic bubble with a large surprise. How large? At least 8

times the mass of the Sun. Nestled in the shell around this large bubble is an

embryonic star that looks set to turn into one of the brightest stars in the

Galaxy.

The Galactic bubble is known as RCW 120. It lies about 4300 light-years away

and has been formed by a star at its centre. The star is not visible at these infrared

wavelengths but pushes on the surrounding dust and gas with nothing more

than the power of its starlight. In the 2.5 million years the star has existed. It

has raised the density of matter in the bubble wall so much that the quantity

trapped there can now collapse to form new stars.

The bright knot to the right of the base of the bubble is an unexpectedly large,

embryonic star, triggered into formation by the power of the central star.

Herschel’s observations have shown that it already contains between 8-10

times the mass of our Sun. The star can only get bigger because it is

surrounded by a cloud containing an additional 2000 solar masses.

Not all of that will fall onto the star, even the largest stars in the

Galaxy do not exceed 150 solar masses. But the question of what stops

the matter falling onto the star is a puzzle for modern astronomers. According

to theory, stars should stop forming at about 8 solar masses. At that mass

they should become so hot that they shine powerfully at ultraviolet wavelengths.

This light should push the surrounding matter away, much as the central

star did to form this bubble. But clearly sometimes this mass limit is

exceeded otherwise there would be no giant stars in the Galaxy. So astronomers

would like to know how some stars can seem to defy physics and grow so large.

Is this newly discovered stellar embryo destined to grow into a stellar monster?

At the moment, nobody knows but further analysis of this Herschel image could

give us invaluable clues.

Credits: ESA/PACS/SPIRE/HOBYS Consortia

6 May 2010

ESA PR 09-2010. The first scientific results from ESA's Herschel infrared space observatory are revealing previously hidden details of star formation. New images show thousands of distant galaxies furiously building stars and beautiful star-forming clouds draped across the Milky Way. One picture even catches an ‘impossible’ star in the act of formation.

Presented today during a major scientific symposium held at the European Space Agency (ESA), the results challenge old ideas of star birth, and open new roads for future research.

Herschel’s observation of the star-forming cloud RCW 120 has revealed an embryonic star which looks set to turn into one of the biggest and brightest stars in our Galaxy within the next few hundred thousand years. It already contains eight to ten times the mass of the Sun and is still surrounded by an additional 2000 solar masses of gas and dust from which it can feed further.

“This star can only grow bigger,” says Annie Zavagno, Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille. Massive stars are rare and short-lived. To catch one during formation presents a golden opportunity to solve a long-standing paradox in astronomy. “According to our current understanding, you should not be able to form stars larger than eight solar masses,” says Dr Zavagno.

This image is taken looking towards a region of the Galaxy in the

Eagle constellation, closer to the Galactic centre than our Sun. Here,

we see the outstanding end-products of the stellar assembly line. At

the centre and the left of the image, the two massive star-forming

regions G29.9 and W43 are clearly visible. These mini-starbursts are

forming, as we speak, hundreds and hundreds of stars of all sizes:

from those similar to our Sun, to monsters several tens of times

heavier than our Sun.

These newborn large stars are catastrophically disrupting their

original gas embryos by kicking away their surroundings and excavating

giant cavities in the Galaxy. This is clearly visible in the 'fluffy

chimney' below W43.

Credits: ESA/Hi-GAL Consortium

This is because the fierce light emitted by such large stars should blast away their birth clouds before any more mass can accumulate. But somehow they do form. Many of these ‘impossible’ stars are already known, some containing up to 150 solar masses, but now that Herschel has seen one near the beginning of its life, astronomers can use the data to investigate how it is defying their theories.

Herschel is the largest astronomical telescope ever to be placed into space. The diameter of its main mirror is four times larger than any previous infrared space telescope and one and a half times larger than Hubble. As stars begin to form, the surrounding dust and gas is warmed up to a few tens of degrees above absolute zero and starts to emit at far-infrared wavelengths. The Earth's atmosphere completely blocks the majority of these wavelengths and thus observations from space are necessary.

This image, in the constellation of Vulpecula, shows an entire assembly

line of newborn stars. The diffuse glow reveals the widespread cold reservoir

of raw material that our Galaxy has in stock for building stars.

Large-scale turbulence from the giant colliding Galactic flows causes this

material to condense into the web of filaments that we see all over the

image. These are the ‘pregnant’ entities where the material becomes colder

and denser. At this point, gravitational forces take over and fragment these

filaments into chains of stellar embryos that can finally collapse to form

baby stars.

Credits: ESA/Hi-GAL Consortium

Using its unprecedented resolution and sensitivity, Herschel is conducting a census of star-forming regions in our Galaxy. “Before Herschel, it was not clear how the material in the Milky Way came together in high enough densities and at sufficiently low temperatures to form stars,” says Sergio Molinari, Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario, Roma.

A new Herschel image released today covering a number of stellar nurseries in the Milky Way shows how it happens. Stellar embryos first appear inside filaments of glowing dust and gas draped across the Galaxy. These form chains of stellar nurseries, tens of light-years long, wrapping the Galaxy in a web of star birth.

Herschel has also been surveying deep space beyond our Galaxy, and has measured the infrared light from thousands of other galaxies, spread across billions of light-years of the Universe. Each galaxy appears as just a pinprick but its brightness allows astronomers to determine the rate of star birth within it. Roughly speaking, the brighter the galaxy the more stars it is forming.

A picture of the first field observed in the H-ATLAS survey, made by combining

the images made with the SPIRE camera at 250, 350 and 500 microns. The

colours in the image are not real but have been used to represent the

different infrared wavelengths. The faint blue whisps at the top of the

image show dust in our own Galaxy and the bright object just above the

centre of the picture is a 'Bok globule', a dense cloud of gas and dust,

also in our Galaxy, in which a small star may be forming. The other objects

in the picture are all galaxies, at distances up to 12 billion light-years.

The image shows that the survey is detecting objects in our celestial

‘backyard’ and also other, further ones that we are seeing as they were

not long after the Big Bang.

Credits: ESA/ATLAS Consortium

Here, too, Herschel has challenged our previous understanding by showing that galaxies have been evolving over cosmic time much faster than previously thought. Astronomers believed that galaxies have been forming stars at about the same rate for the last three billion years. Herschel shows this is not true.

In the past, there were many more so-called ‘starburst’ galaxies forming stars at 10–15 times the rate we see in the Milky Way today. But what triggered this frantic activity is not completely understood. “Herschel will now let us investigate the reasons for this behaviour,” says Steve Eales, Cardiff University, UK.

Herschel is also a prime instrument for detecting the smallest forms of matter: molecules. It has made the first discovery in space of a new ‘phase’ of water. It is electrically charged and unlike the more familiar phases, namely solid ice, liquid water and gaseous steam, it does not occur naturally on Earth. In the birth clouds surrounding young stars, however, where ultraviolet light is pumping through the gas, this irradiation can knock an electron out of the water molecule, leaving it with an electrical change.

“This detection of ionised water vapour came as a surprise,” says Arnold Benz, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. “It tells us that there are violent processes taking place during the early birth stages which lead to widespread energetic radiation throughout the cloud.” 
From the biggest galaxies to the smallest molecules, these and many other Herschel results are being presented to the scientific community at the Herschel First Results Symposium, ESLAB 2010, taking place this week at ESA’s ESTEC space research and technology centre, in Noordwijk in the Netherlands.

“These are still early days for Herschel and this is just the beginning of all the science that we will get from this mission in the years to come,” says Göran Pilbratt, ESA Herschel Project Scientist.

Source: ESA - News

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Herschel - One year after launch

06 May 2010

One year after the launch of the space telescope Herschel, on top of an Ariane 5 on 14 May 2009 from Guyane, we already have a better knowledge in Infrared Astronomy, in particular about the formation and evolution of galaxies and stars.

In this story ESA Project scientist Göran Pilbratt and SPIRE co-investigator Annie Zavagno, from the Laboratory of Astrophysics of Marseille, explain the progress of the mission of this extraordinary Space Observatory.

Already Herschel, the largest astronomical telescope ever launched, provides never seen before images of star-forming regions.

Source: ESA Channel - YouTube

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Herschel takes the temperature of an interstellar cloud

Left: optical image of the CB244 globule region showing background stars and

the cold, dense globule material in the centre. Right: dust temperature and

column density of the CB244 cold, dense material based on the Herschel

emission maps. Object 1 is a young stellar object and object 2 is a prestellar

core that is likely to form a star.

Credits: ESA/EPOS Consortium

6 May 2010

The unrivalled ability of ESA’s Herschel infrared space observatory to discern detail in celestial objects has been used to take the temperature across a star-forming cloud. For the first time, an entire cloud has had its temperature mapped from the centre to the edge.

Herschel has revealed two regions inside the cloud where individual stars will form. In the first, which has a temperature of –255°C, Herschel pinpointed the nascent star. The second region is so young that there is not even a star yet, just a collapsing core of gas and dust. Eventually, this too will become a hot star but at present its temperature is just –262°C.

The temperature map has allowed astronomers to calculate the amount of matter inside the cloud. The young star contains 1.6 times the mass of the Sun, the collapsing region contains between 3 and 7 times the Sun’s mass. Overall, the cloud is between 10 and 20 times the Sun’s mass, meaning that almost half of its mass is involved in forming these two stars.

The observation also reveals that the temperature of the cloud rises towards the outer edges. This shows where the light from the surrounding stars is heating the outer faces.

“We cannot measure these temperatures from the ground,” says Amelia Stutz, of the Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg. “That’s because the atmosphere blocks these wavelengths but Herschel is poised perfectly in space and designed to investigate these coldest regions of the Universe.”

Contacts

Amelia Stutz

Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg, Germany

Tel: +49 6221 528 370


Email: stutz @ mpia-hd.mpg.de

Source: ESA - Herschel - News

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Tracing the Milky Way’s hidden reservoirs of gas

ESA’s Herschel infrared observatory has an unprecedented view on the cold

universe, bridging the gap between what can be observed from the ground

and earlier infrared space missions. Infrared radiation can penetrate the gas

and dust clouds that hide objects from optical telescopes, looking deep into

star-forming regions, galactic centres and planetary systems. Also cooler

objects, such as tiny stars and molecular clouds, even galaxies enshrouded in

dust that are barely emitting optical light, can be visible in the infrared.

Credits: ESA - C. Carreau

6 May 2010

ESA’s Herschel infrared space observatory has found that hydrogen fluoride molecules are everywhere in interstellar gas clouds. They betray hidden reservoirs of gas, and may ultimately become a key tracer of star-forming gas clouds in distant galaxies.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe, making up three-quarters of the normal matter. But at the low temperatures found in a star-forming cloud, hydrogen pairs up into molecules that do not readily emit radiation. That means these molecules are hidden from astronomers’ telescopes.

Traditionally, astronomers have looked for the hydrogen by detecting carbon monoxide, which does emit at such low temperatures. But carbon monoxide does not form directly from hydrogen; intermediate steps include the creation of other molecules first.

Now, help is at hand. Herschel finds that hydrogen fluoride is ubiquitous throughout the Milky Way. It marks the clouds of hydrogen molecules. This is because fluorine is highly reactive: it attacks the surrounding hydrogen, making hydrogen fluoride in a single step.

Hot hydrogen fluoride was first detected in space by ESA’s Infrared Space Observatory in 1997. This new finding from Herschel is the first detection of cold hydrogen fluoride and shows that almost all fluorine in clouds of hydrogen molecules has been transformed into the molecule. It confirms a prediction made by the observing team five years ago and presents astronomers with a new way to trace hydrogen.

“Hydrogen fluoride may be a more robust tracer of hidden molecular hydrogen than any other molecule used at present,” says Edwin Bergin of the University of Michigan, USA.

Looking for hydrogen fluoride may even become a standard way for astronomers to trace hydrogen molecules throughout the Universe. This is because it shows up in interstellar gas clouds of all sizes, and not just the largest ones.

Contacts

David Neufeld

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Tel: +1 410 516 8582

Email: neufeld @ pha.jhu.edu

Edwin Bergin

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

Tel: +1 734 615 8720

Email: ebergin @ umich.edu

Maryvonne Gerin

LERMA, Observatoire de Paris, France

Tel: +33 (0)1 44 32 33 48

Email: maryvonne.gerin @ lra.ens.fr

Source: ESA - Herschel - News

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Herschel resolves the cosmic infrared fog

ESA’s Herschel space telescope has discovered that previously

unseen distant galaxies are responsible for a cosmic fog of

infrared radiation. The galaxies are some of the faintest and

furthest objects seen by Herschel, and open a new window on

the birth of stars in the early Universe.

The data was taken with Herschel's PACS instrument and

combines wavelengths of 70,100 and 160 microns. To date,

it is the most sensitive image of the Universe taken with

Herschel.

Credits: ESA/PEP Consortium

6 May 2010

ESA’s Herschel space telescope has discovered that previously unseen distant galaxies are responsible for a cosmic fog of infrared radiation. The galaxies are some of the faintest and furthest objects seen by Herschel, and open a new window on the birth of stars in the early Universe.

In the mid-1990s, astronomers discovered that a faint fog of infrared radiation bathes the Universe, and termed it the cosmic infrared background. Herschel is the first telescope to resolve most of the blur into individual celestial objects.

Herschel made its observations in October 2009 and January 2010. It targeted two regions of the sky, one known as GOODS-North, the other GOODS-South. The latter is the most sensitive far-infrared image yet taken by Herschel. The GOODS fields are designated for studying the distant Universe and have been extensively investigated by other observatories. Neither contains nearby celestial objects, allowing telescopes to see straight out into the deepest regions of space. Herschel resolved the cosmic infrared background into 300 previously unseen galaxies in GOODS-N, and 800 of them in GOODS-S. Together, these galaxies contribute more than half the power to the infrared background in these regions.

The galaxies are young, some of them seen at a time when the Universe was just 16% of its present age. They are forming young stars, in some case up to thousands every year. Our own Galaxy forms an average of just three per year.

“We can use these results to study what controls star formation in these distant galaxies, and how galaxies like our Milky Way formed,” says Dieter Lutz of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany, head of the PEP European collaboration that obtained the data.

Contact

Dieter Lutz

Max Planck Institute for extraterrestrial Physics

Tel: +49 89 30000 3614

Email: lutz @ mpe.mpg.de

Editors’ Note

GOODS stands for Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey.

Source: ESA - Herschel - News

[2of7]

NGC 1999 is the green tinged cloud towards the top of the image. The dark spot to the right was thought to be a cloud of dense dust and gas until Herschel looked at it. It is in fact a hole that has been blown in the side of NGC 1999 by the jets and winds of gas from the young stellar objects in this region of space.

This image combines Herschel PACS 70 and 160 micron data, and 1.6 and 2.2 micron data with the NEWFIRM camera on the Kitt Peak 4 meter.

Credits: ESA/HOPS Consortium

Source: http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMFEAKPO8G_index_1.html

Full article: http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMFEAKPO8G_index_0.html

[TALM]

My brain just popped

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Planck’s new view of the cosmic theatre

11 January 2011

ESA PR-3 2011 The first scientific results from ESA’s Planck mission were released at a press briefing today in Paris. The findings focus on the coldest objects in the Universe, from within our Galaxy to the distant reaches of space.

This animation illustrates the position on the sky of all compact sources detected

by Planck during its first all-sky survey and listed in the Early Release Compact

Source Catalogue (ERCSC). It shows how they compare to the microwave view

of the sky, also seen by Planck.

The ERCSC contains more than 15 000 compact sources and comprises a wide variety

of astronomical objects, both galactic (including cold molecular cloud cores and

stars with dust shells) and extragalactic (such as radio galaxies, blazars, infrared-

luminous galaxies and galaxy clusters). It represents a rich and robust database

for the entire astronomical community.

The size of the spots displayed in the series of images reflects the brightness of

the sources.

Credits: ESA/Planck Collaboration

If William Shakespeare were an astronomer living today, he might write that “All the Universe is a stage, and all the galaxies merely players.” Planck is bringing us new views of both the stage and players, revealing the drama of the evolution of our Universe.

Following the publication by ESA of the first full-sky Planck image in July last year, today sees the release of the first scientific results from the mission.

These results are being presented by the Planck Collaboration at a major scientific conference in Paris this week, based on 25 papers submitted to the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

This image shows the location of the first six fields used to detect and study the Cosmic Infrared Background. The fields,

named N1, AG, SP, LH2, Boötes 1 and Boötes 2, respectively, are all located at a relatively high galactic latitude, where

the foreground contamination due to the Milky Way's diffuse emission is less dramatic.

Credits: ESA/Planck Collaboration

The basis of many of these results is the Planck mission’s ‘Early Release Compact Source Catalogue’, the equivalent of a cast list.

Drawn from Planck’s continuing survey of the entire sky at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths, the catalogue contains thousands of very cold, individual sources which the scientific community is now free to explore.

“This is a great moment for Planck. Until now, everything has been about collecting data and showing off their potential. Now, at last, we can begin the discoveries,” says Jan Tauber, ESA Project Scientist for Planck.

We can think of the Universe as a stage on which the great cosmic drama plays out over three acts.

Visible-light telescopes see little more than the final act: the tapestry of galaxies around us. But by making measurements at wavelengths between the infrared and radio, Planck is able to work back in time and show us the preceding two acts. The results released today contain important new information about the middle act, when the galaxies were being assembled.

This animation shows the network of clumped structures corresponding to the

distribution of dusty, star-forming galaxies on very large scales and throughout

cosmic history. The various frequencies probed by Planck's HFI instrument reveal

different amounts of structure. This is because each frequency is most sensitive

to emission coming from galaxies at certain distances. Hence they show the progress

of galaxy formation.

Observations at the highest frequency, 857 GHz, yield the most information about

the closer galaxies, whereas the lower frequencies offer a chance to peer farther

and farther away, emphasising Planck's ability to track down the early phases of

galaxy formation.

The patch of the sky shown in this animation is located at relatively high galactic

latitude, where the foreground contamination due to the Milky Way's diffuse emission

is less dramatic.

Credits: ESA/Planck Collaboration

Planck has found evidence for an otherwise invisible population of galaxies shrouded in dust billions of years in the past, which formed stars at rates some 10–1000 times higher than we see in our own Galaxy today. Measurements of this population had never been made at these wavelengths before. “This is a first step, we are just learning how to work with these data and extract the most information,” says Jean-Loup Puget, CNRS-Université Paris Sud, Orsay, France.

Eventually, Planck will show us the best views yet of the Universe’s first act: the formation of the first large-scale structures in the Universe, where the galaxies were later born. These structures are traced by the cosmic microwave background radiation, released just 380 000 years after the Big Bang, as the Universe was cooling.

However, in order to see it properly, contaminating emission from a whole host of foreground sources must first be removed. These include the individual objects contained in the Early Release Compact Source Catalogue, as well as various sources of diffuse emission.

The colour composite of the Rho Ophiuchus molecular cloud highlights the correlation between the anomalous microwave

emission, most likely due to miniature spinning dust grains observed at 30 GHz (shown here in red), and the thermal dust

emission, observed at 857 GHz (shown here in green). The complex structure of knots and filaments, visible in this cloud

of gas and dust, represents striking evidence for the ongoing processes of star formation.

The composite image (right) is based on three individual maps (left) taken at 0.4 GHz from Haslam et al. (1982) and at

30 GHz and 857 GHz by Planck, respectively. The size of the image is about 5 degrees on a side, which is about 10 times

the apparent diameter of the full Moon.

Credits: ESA/Planck Collaboration

Today, an important step towards removing this contamination was also announced. The ‘anomalous microwave emission’ is a diffuse glow most strongly associated with the dense, dusty regions of our Galaxy, but its origin has been a puzzle for decades.

However, data collected across Planck’s unprecedented wide wavelength range confirm the theory that it is coming from dust grains set spinning at several tens of billion times a second by collisions with either fast-moving atoms or packets of ultraviolet light.

This new understanding helps to remove this local microwave ‘fog’ from the Planck data with greater precision, leaving the cosmic microwave background untouched.

“This is a great result made possible by the exceptional quality of the Planck data,” says Clive Dickinson, University of Manchester, UK.

This image shows one of the newly discovered superclusters of galaxies, PLCK G214.6+37.0, detected by Planck and

confirmed by XMM-Newton. This is the first supercluster to be discovered through its Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. The

effect is the name for the cluster’s silhouette against the cosmic microwave background radiation. Combined with other

observations, the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect allows astronomers to measure properties such as the temperature and density

of the cluster’s hot gas where the galaxies are embedded. The right panel shows the X-ray image of the supercluster obtained

with XMM-Newton, which reveals that three galaxy clusters comprise this supercluster. The bright orange blob in the left

panel shows the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich image of the supercluster, obtained by Planck. The X-ray contours are also superimposed

on the Planck image.

Credits: ESA/Planck Collaboration; XMM-Newton image: ESA

Among the many other results presented today, Planck has shown new details of yet other actors on the cosmic stage: distant clusters of galaxies. These show up in the Planck data as compact silhouettes against the cosmic microwave background.

The Planck Collaboration has identified 189 so far, including 20 previously unknown clusters that are being confirmed by ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory.

By surveying the whole sky, Planck stands the best chance of finding the most massive examples of these clusters. They are rare and their number is a sensitive probe of the kind of Universe we live in, how fast it is expanding, and how much matter it contains.

“These observations will be used as bricks to build our understanding of the Universe,” says Nabila Aghanim, CNRS-Université Paris Sud, Orsay, France.

“Today’s results are the tip of the scientific iceberg. Planck is exceeding expectations thanks to the dedication of everyone involved in the project,” says David Southwood, ESA Director of Science and Robotic Exploration.

“However, beyond those announced today, this catalogue contains the raw material for many more discoveries. Even then, we haven’t got to the real treasure yet, the cosmic microwave background itself.”

Planck continues to survey the Universe. Its next data release is scheduled for January 2013 and will reveal the cosmic microwave background in unprecedented detail, the opening act of the cosmic drama, a picture of the beginning of everything.

Notes for editors

Source: ESA - News