Walk the Planck

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Planck Mission Peels Back Layers of the Universe

PASADENA, Calif. -- The Planck mission released a new data catalogue Tuesday
from initial maps of the entire sky. The catalogue includes thousands of
never-before-seen dusty cocoons where stars are forming, and some of the
most massive clusters of galaxies ever observed. Planck is a European Space
Agency mission with significant contributions from NASA.


"NASA is pleased to support this important mission, and we have eagerly
awaited Planck's first discoveries," said Jon Morse, NASA's Astrophysics
Division director at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "We look
forward to continued collaboration with ESA and more outstanding science
to
come."

Planck launched in May 2009 on a mission to detect light from just a few
hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, an explosive event at the dawn
of
the universe approximately 13.7 billion years ago. The spacecraft's
state-of-the-art detectors ultimately will survey the whole sky at least
four times, measuring the cosmic microwave background, or radiation left
over from the Big Bang. The data will help scientists decipher clues
about
the evolution, fate and fabric of our universe. While these cosmology
results won't be ready for another two years or so, early observations
of
specific objects in our Milky Way galaxy, as well as more distant
galaxies,
are being released.

"The data we're releasing now are from what lies between us and the
cosmic
microwave background," said Charles Lawrence, the U.S. project scientist
for
Planck at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. We
ultimately
will subtract these data out to get at our cosmic microwave background
signal. But by themselves, these early observations offer up new
information
about objects in our universe -- both close and far away, and everything
in
between."

Planck observes the sky at nine wavelengths of light, ranging from
infrared
to radio waves. Its technology has greatly improved sensitivity and
resolution over its predecessor missions, NASA's Cosmic Background
Explorer
and Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe.

The result is a windfall of data on known and never-before-seen cosmic
objects. Planck has catalogued approximately 10,000 star-forming "cold
cores," thousands of which are newly discovered. The cores are dark and
dusty nurseries where baby stars are just beginning to take shape. They
also
are some of the coldest places in the universe. Planck's new catalogue
includes some of the coldest cores ever seen, with temperatures as low
as
seven degrees above absolute zero, or minus 447 degrees Fahrenheit. In
order
to see the coldest gas and dust in the Milky Way, Planck's detectors
were
chilled to only 0.1 Kelvin.

The new catalogue also contains some of the most massive clusters of
galaxies known, including a handful of newfound ones. The most massive
of
these holds the equivalent of a million billion suns worth of mass,
making
it one of the most massive galaxy clusters known.

Galaxies in our universe are bound together into these larger clusters,
forming a lumpy network across the cosmos. Scientists study the clusters
to
learn more about the evolution of galaxies and dark matter and dark
energy
-- the exotic substances that constitute the majority of our universe.

"Because Planck is observing the whole sky, it is giving us a
comprehensive
look at how all the smaller structures of the universe are connected to
the
whole," said Jim Bartlett, a U.S. Planck team member at JPL and
the Astroparticule et Cosmologie-Universite Paris Diderot in France.

Planck's new catalogue also includes unique data on the pools of hot gas
that permeate roughly 14,000 smaller clusters of galaxies; the best data
yet
on the cosmic infrared background, which is made up of light from stars
evolving in the early universe; and new observations of extremely
energetic
galaxies spewing radio jets. The catalogue covers about one-and-a-half
sky
scans.

More information on Planck is online at http://www.nasa.gov/planck and
http://www.esa.int/planck .

Planck is a European Space Agency mission, with significant
participation
from NASA. NASA's Planck Project Office is based at JPL. JPL contributed
mission-enabling technology for both of Planck's science instruments.
European, Canadian and U.S. Planck scientists will work together to
analyze
the Planck data. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena.