Planck Status: Routine Operations (First All-Sky Survey)
Location: in orbit around L2
Routine Operations Begin
Posted August 14th, 2009 by chrisnorth
As of 13th August 2009, Planck is in "routine operations mode". The first two weeks are taken up by the "First Light Survey" which is intended to check that everything really is working in that mode. Providing everything works as expected, Planck will continue to operate in this mode.
In 15 months the first two surveys of the full sky will be complete, and Planck should continue to scan the sky until its coolant runs out. The major science results will take quite a while to come out due to the immense amount of computation needed to analyse them, and are expected in around 3 years' time. These results will be a full-sky map of the Cosmic Microwave Background, and more accurate measurements of the parameters which have governed how our Universe has evolved.
Image credit: ESA/NASA/WMAP
Planck sees the sky at higher resolution than previous satellites, and so will be able to see smaller features in the sky. The resolution is still coarse relative to optical telescopes such as Hubble because the wavelength is much longer - the smallest "beams" on Planck are about 1/6th the diameter of the Full Moon as seen from the ground. Anything much smaller than this will only be seen as a single "fuzzy blob" in the map, with little or no information about the shape and size of the object. This is a bit like taking a camera out of focus and trying to look at something small on the horizon - all you'll see is a fuzzy blob. In astronomy such objects are called "compact sources".
In around 18 months the "Early Release Compact Source Catalogue" will be released. This will be a collation of all the compact sources which Planck has seen in its first pass over the sky. This is slightly less computation required to identify thes sources, to they can be released earlier than the core science results. Publishing the catalogue early also means that they can be observed by other telescopes - such as Herschel. Since Planck has a finer resolution than its space-based predecessors, such as WMAP, and is more sensitive, there are certain to be sources found which haven't been seen before.
Over the course of its whole lifetime, Planck will be able to detect fainter and fainter objects, which is why this is an "Early Release" catalogue - the later releases should have even more sources in.
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As we know that Universe and eventually Earth are emerged from Big-Bang simultaneously.It simply means that light also travels as our Earth and Universe expands in each dimension.Then how can we see the light which illuminates or produce instantly after the explision of BIG-BANG? AND according to my knowledge the Light cannot travel in reverse direction i.e. from earth to the place where BIG-BANG happens.
I believe part of what you are describing is "The Horizon Problem".
The light we see as the CMB was emitted nearly 14 billion years ago, and has taken that long to reach us. We are seeing the Universe as it was 14 billion years ago. The part of the Universe where the Earth has now formed was also emiting light, which has also been travelling for 14 billion years. Since the time when the CMB was released, those parts of the Universe will also have formed stars, galaxies and planets. And who knows, there could be an alien race looking over at our part of the Universe as it was 14 billion years ago - and they'd be looking at whatever their name is for the Cosmic Microwave Background.
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