(Community Matters) The Planck Observatory is a European telescope launched to study the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in our universe, remnants of the Big Bang (est 14 billion years ago). The image below is one of the first received since its launch in May.
Of course, I don’t get all this but the CMB is detected by looking for variations in temperature “a million times smaller than one degree – this is comparable to measuring from Earth the body heat of a rabbit sitting on the Moon.”
The image above represents the Planck’s first light survey, conducted over a 2-week period (the Planck continuously surveying the sky).
The image on the right (the Planck) was taken from the Herschel, another telescope launched simultaneously & on the same rocket. I haven’t yet seen images from Herschel, but it, like Planck, observes outside the visible part of the spectrum – gathering information on how stars and galaxies evolve.
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