Courtesy ESA HFI and LFI consortiaA new map created from data gathered by the Planck Space Telescope shows new aspects of our universe not before seen. The telescope’s sensors captured in long wavelengths of light invisible to the human eye that show gigantic plumes of dust and matter swirling above and below the plane of our Milky Way galaxy.
"What you see is the structure of our galaxy in gas and dust, which tells us an awful lot about what is going on in the neighborhood of the Sun; and it tells us a lot about the way galaxies form when we compare this to other galaxies."-- Professor Andrew Jaffe, Planck Space Telescope team member
The Planck research team hopes to answer several questions concerning the origins and structures of the universe. It will concentrate on the cosmic microwave background, the remnant radiation from the Big Bang that permeates the entire universe. It will also search out the secrets of other phenomenon such as gravitational waves, and dark energy and matter. A second version of the map is in the process of being created and there are plans for two additional ones.
In May of 2009, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Planck Space Telescope and the Herschel telescope together into space. Both telescopes function from an orbital position called the second Lagrange point located some one million miles away from the dark side of the Earth, and both in the infrared light range. Over the last six months the Planck telescope has been busy scanning and mapping the full sky searching out answers to how galaxy form and the very origins of the universe. The scope’s sensitive instruments were built to function in the extreme conditions of space, some at temperatures just 1/10th of a degree above absolute zero! Since the observatory is viewing the universe in long wavelengths of light it’s not really seeing stars themselves but rather the materials – dust and gas – from which stars are formed.
But if you’re like me, being restricted to a single wavelength just doesn’t do it, so for views of the universe in other wavelengths I suggest you visit Chromascope.net, a nifty website that allows you to view the universe in all sorts of wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum.