PASADENA, CA - Tendrils of the coldest stuff in our galaxy can be seen in a new, large image from Planck, a mission surveying the whole sky to learn more about the birth of our universe.
Planck, a European Space Agency-led mission with important participation from NASA, launched into space in May 2009 from Kourou, French Guiana. The space telescope has almost finished its first of at least four separate scans of the entire sky, a voluminous task that will be completed in early 2012. The new image, available online at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/planck/pia12964.html, highlights a swath of our Milky Way galaxy occupying about one-thirteenth of the entire sky. It shows the bright band of our galaxy's spiral disk amidst swirling clouds where gas and dust mix together and, sometimes, ignite to form new stars. The data were taken in the so-called far-infrared portion of the light spectrum, using two of nine different frequencies available on Planck. 
"We've got huge amounts of data streaming down from space," said Ulf Israelsson, the NASA project manager for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The intricate process of sorting through all of it has begun." The mission's primary objective is to map the cosmic microwave background -- relic radiation left over from the Big Bang that created our universe about 13.7 billion years ago. Planck's state-of-the-art technology will provide the most detailed information yet about the size, mass, age, geometry, composition and fate of the universe. In addition to cosmological questions like these, the mission will address such astronomy topics as star formation and galactic structure. Its observations will be used in synergy with data from other missions, such as the Herschel Space Observatory, another ESA mission with important NASA participation, and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. "Planck is the first big cosmology mission that will also have a large impact on our understanding of our galaxy, the Milky Way," said Charles Lawrence, the mission's NASA project scientist at JPL. "We can see the cold dust and gas that permeate our galaxy on very large scales, while other missions like Herschel can zoom in to see the detail." Planck is scheduled to release a first batch of astronomy data, called the Early Release Compact Source Catalog, in Jan. 2011. Cosmology results on the first two years' worth of data are expected to be released in Dec. 2012. 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, U.S. and NASA Planck scientists will work together to analyze the Planck data. More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/planck and http://www.esa.int/planck . (Photo Above: Planck’s ability to measure the temperature of the coldest dust particles will provide a better understanding of the physical processes at play in the spaces between stars, and in regions of star formation. This image covers a portion of the sky about 50 degrees in total extent. It is a three-color combination constructed from Planck’s two highest frequency channels (557 and 857 Gigahertz, corresponding to wavelengths of 540 and 350 micrometers), and an image obtained at 100 micrometers with the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). This combination effectively traces the dust: reddish tones correspond to temperatures as cold as 12 degrees above absolute zero, and whitish tones to significantly warmer ones (on order a few tens of degrees) in regions where massive stars are currently forming. Overall, the image shows local dust structures within 500 light-years of the sun. This Planck image was obtained during the first Planck all-sky survey, which began in mid-August 2009. By mid-March 2010, more than 98 percent of the sky had been observed. The second sky scan is underway, but, because of the way Planck surveys the sky, the first scan won't be 100 percent complete until late-May 2010. 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, U.S. and NASA Planck scientists will work together to analyze the Planck data. More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/planck and http://www.esa.int/planck. Image Credit: ESA and the HFI Consortium, IRAS) (Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory / NASA)
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