  The decomposition of a signal on the sphere with the steerable wavelet
constructed from the second Gaussian derivative gives access to the
orientation, signed-intensity, and elongation of the signal's local features.
In the present work, the non-Gaussianity of the WMAP temperature data of the
cosmic microwave background (CMB) is analyzed in terms of the first four
moments of the statistically isotropic random fields associated with these
local morphological measures, at wavelet scales corresponding to angular sizes
between 27.5 arcminutes and 30 degrees on the celestial sphere. While no
detection is made neither in the orientation analysis nor in the elongation
analysis, a strong detection is made in the excess kurtosis of the
signed-intensity of the WMAP data. The non-Gaussianity is observed with a
significance level below 0.5% at a wavelet scale corresponding to an angular
size around 10 degrees, and confirmed at neighbour scales. This supports a
previous detection of an excess of kurtosis in the wavelet coefficient of the
WMAP data with the axisymmetric Mexican hat wavelet (Vielva et al. 2004).
Instrumental noise and foreground emissions are not likely to be at the origin
of the excess of kurtosis. Large-scale modulations of the CMB related to some
unknown systematics are rejected as possible origins of the detection. The
observed non-Gaussianity may therefore probably be imputed to the CMB itself,
thereby questioning the basic inflationary scenario upon which the present
concordance cosmological model relies. Taking the CMB temperature angular power
spectrum of the concordance cosmological model at face value, further analysis
also suggests that this non-Gaussianity is not confined to the directions on
the celestial sphere with an anomalous signed-intensity.
