London: The Planck observatory, which was sent into space to record the origins of the universe, has beamed back first images of the fall out after the Big Bang.
According to the `New Scientist`, four months after it was launched into space, the Planck telescope has obtained its first peek at the afterglow of the Big Bang, revealing it
in unprecedented detail.
The European Space Agency spacecraft was launched into space in May. It`s observing the glow of hot gas from 380,000 years after Big Bang, called the cosmic microwave background.
Now, the Planck team has released the probe`s first image, an observational strip covering about five per cent of the sky. Slight variations in temperature from place to place
in the early universe give the image its mottled appearance.
"With a few per cent of the data in, you can see it is working well and delivering good stuff," team member George Efstathiou of the University of Cambridge said.
Planck is expected to provide the most detailed all-sky map of the cosmic microwave background yet, improving on the best current map obtained by NASA`s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), launched in 2001, astronomers said.
Planck`s detectors have more than 10 times the sensitivity of WMAP`s and 2.5 times the angular resolution.
"Every strip that Planck scans, we`re getting data that is many, many times more sensitive than WMAP," Efstathiou was quoted as saying.
Although Planck was only designed to observe the sky for 15 months, the team believes it could last for more than 30 months based on estimates of how long its coolant lasts.
And, the astronomers said that the extra time will allow Planck to measure the radiation with even greater precision, since it will scan the entire sky four times -- two
more than originally planned.
IANS
