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Planck Satellite Releases First Images
davecl writes "The Planck Satellite has released its first images. These are from the 'First Look Survey' and show a strip of the sky scanned at a range of radio and submillimetre wavelengths. The results are already better than what was seen by the previous microwave background satellite, WMAP. More details and images available in English and French. The Planck Mission Blog contains more details of the project and continuing coverage. I maintain the mission blog but even I am impressed with these first images!"
I was involved for a while with a project within Manchester university where they were looking to map some of the cmb on the cheap using students/postgrads and a few Professors combined with some off the shelf tech.
To cut down on costs we were going to use the receivers from sky's satellite dishes since theres millions of the things, combined with a form of interference.
My job was supposed to be (until I suddenly was swamped with other responsibilities and had to leave the project) to write the code that would create montecarlo simulations of the project.
Was a while ago since I left I wonder how they have gotten on with it now.
Fucking excellent.
stds, not so good.
The detectors are looking for variations in the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background that are about a million times smaller than one degree â" this is comparable to measuring from Earth the body heat of a rabbit sitting on the Moon.
The body heat of a rabbit sitting on the moon? Interesting example.
I don't even know what I'm looking at. It looks like something I could have made with my Commodore Amiga.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Breaking news !
The universe is green with blotches of red !
Details to follow !
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Very nice resolution. I can't wait to see further output from the project.
I don't even know what I'm looking at.
Were you accidentally looking at the French images? Try the English ones and see if that helps.
Ah yes, karma whoring with nothing more than a stock quote from Monty Python. A prime example of the failure of slashdot.
Franchement débile. I have no praise for your english reading skills...
More details and images available in English and French.
Mais il est vrai qu'après tout, c'est Slashdot.
...if my first thought was "Planck? That's an awfully small satellite."
During one of the wars that the French fought against the British, the French just happened to capture a British Major.
An officer brought the Major to the French General for interrogation.
The French General began ridiculing the Major for wearing "that stupid red tunic."
The French General said,
"Why to you wear that red uniform, it makes it easy for us to shoot you."
The British major replied,
"If I do get wounded, the blood will not show, and my soldiers will not get scared."
The French general said,
"That is a very good idea,"
The French General then turned to his orderly and said,
"From now on all French officers will wear brown pants."
Oh my god, It's full of stars!
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
I am very curious to see Planck's resolution compared to the W-MAP. Just zoom into a bit of the map, and show them side by side, that's all I ask! They do have some nice zooms of the map on the french-language site, and I suppose if I wasn't so lazy I could find the corresponding sections in the W-MAP output. I know that Planck can detect the polarization of the CMB, I'm just dying to see what that will show us!
I've read several times that while Planck has many times the resolution and sensitivity of the W-MAP probe, there's really no more information to be gained beyond Planck. It will give us almost every bit of information that the cosmic background radiation has for us. It's kind of amazing, really.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
If you're talking about the image that shows the strip of sky Plank observed superimposed on a visible light picture, then that's the Milky Way.
If you're talking about the other images, then I'm not sure which patch we're talking about, since there's a number of bright-ish patches.
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More details and images available in English and French.
What's the difference between an English image and a French image?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
There's a lot more to do beyond Planck on polarization, but you're right that primary intensity anisotropies in the CMB will essentially be done by Planck. There are lots of secondary anisotropies, such as the SZ-Effect, on smaller scales to be done at higher resolution, though, and instruments like the SPT are doing exactly that.
I was left wondering about the scan pattern shown in the animation "Planck scanning the sky". I have no idea if it matches what the satellite actually does, but if it does then it seems they would gain a much better image at 'the center of the galaxy' by altering the axis of the scan pattern so the 'poles' of the scan point to it. In the animation the scanning 'poles' are currently aimed at the the section in the galaxy with the least information (the very top and bottom of the light survey image), and it seems to me that the poles are where the satellite would have the best resolution (because it passes over the poles during its scan many times and then you could calculate a very high resolution scan from all of these passes for the circular section of overlap).
Therefor wouldn't it be better to alter the scan axis by 90 degrees so the poles of the scan point toward the center of the galaxy? Perhaps this doesn't matter as they are going to do passes until the end of time and refine the resolution, but the poles would still have many times the resolution of the rest of the scans.
Here you go. (The Planck data in this picture is simulated.)
Your red-bluish widdle-waddle is important to science, I know, but that bitchin' hires-photo of our galaxy that you pair it with would make a nice skybox for compiz-fusion...wink-wing...nudge-nudge...y'know what I mean?
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
I'd expect the Planck satellite to provide just one very small constant image.
Yeah that would be great if the Big Bang had anything to do with the origin of life at all. You should try actually reading it sometime. Protip - what you're looking for is abiogenesis.
Here is a high resolution image from the article: http://www.esa.int/images/FIRST_LIGHT_SURVEY.jpg
Here is a high resolution image from the WMAP data: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/WMAP_2008_94GHz.png
Enjoy.
No idea what that is... but you can see other similarly bright spots outside of the milky way, so whatever it is probably not unusual? Another galaxy maybe?
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Protip - what you're looking for is abiogenesis.
Yeah, I'm not sure he's "looking" for anything outside his own navel. :)
I do always love it when someone has a problem with existing theory because of "fudge factors" that help the theory fit experimental evidence, and their replacement is some ill-formed philosophy that is, essentially, one giant fudge factor with no experimental evidence or connection to reality. Because that's good science.
Hint to crackpots: Science, and especially physics, is prone to massive upheavals and revolutions. In every case, though, these upheavals come from people who are fully versed in the existing theory, and understand both its weakness and its extremely well verified successes. Since this doesn't describe you, you probably aren't the revolutionary you think you are.
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I don't even know what I'm looking at. It looks like something I could have made with my Commodore Amiga.
I've heard ridiculous claims from Amiga fans before, but are you actually claiming that an Amiga can be used to create the universe?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Manned spaceflight
Manned exploration. People opposed to exploration seem like they must be among the most uninteresting people imaginable.
Apropos, some people decry space science, because it won't tell us anything about things here on Earth (which is not entirely true, but true enough in the way they mean it). Some people explore space through a telescope, some from the tip of a rocket.
It's rather hypocritical to applaud one form of exploration, but deride the other. They're both important human endeavors.
Wouldn't it be easier to send eggs and sperm to Mars and then have them combine and incubate there?
I drank what? -- Socrates
If the universe is Googolplexs as opposed to billions of years old, it substantially increases the odds of that life could have started elsewhere and evolved over a much longer period time giving it LOT more time to spread throughout the universe reaching Earth as well as other planets. (Spores in meteorites etc..)
Panspermia is a possible origin for life on earth in either case. Sure, a ridiculously ancient universe means panspermia could have happened over larger areas, but why is that so significant? It's not like there's a lot of evidence that such a long time span is required for life to have arose and (if it didn't arise here) reach earth. We have no idea how common life is; it may have only had to travel a short distance. We've only just begun to be able to see exoplanets and we've already found hundreds, and found nearby earth-mass planets basically as soon as it was feasible for us to do so. And the universe as currently estimated is still pretty old, plenty of time for life to have crossed most of the galaxy. So what about abiogenesis is pointing to a ridiculously old universe?
The Big Bang is just religion masquerading as science and is full of holes. Refering to those who disagree with it as "crackpots" is making the same mistake that you are accusing the so called "crackpots" of making.
None of the actual educated and accomplished physicists -- i.e. the kind of person who every revolutionary in the history of physics was, and you crackpots aren't -- who disagree with the Big Bang theory think the Big Bang theory is "just religion". They know it's a valid scientific theory that yes has holes, but also has a lot of evidence, meaning experimentally verified predictions. They have their own well-crafted cosmologies that they prefer. But because these alternative cosmologies are well-crafted and based on an understanding of the evidence out there, they make many of the same predictions, they have their own holes and potential problems, and they can't yet experimentally test for the differences to definitively prove their version is right.
It's actually an exciting time in physics and cosmology. We know existing theories are flawed and need modification or replacement -- putting out to pasture the idea that it's "religion" -- but theoretical attempts to fix the problem are ahead of our ability to engineer devices to test them. But such devices are coming soon, and we'll be putting our theories to the test. Just like religion? Yeah, right.
There are competent physicists who disagree with the Big Bang theory, and then there are crackpots who claim it's all "religion" and in doing so prove their lack of understanding. Don't worry, I'm not the one making the mistake of conflating these two groups. Oh but just to make sure, please do tell me about your fantastic alternate cosmological theory, and how it's verifiably correct while big bang theory isn't. Lemme guess... plasmas and currents?
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