Planck mission
Planck mission

ESA's Planck mission has finished its first survey of the full sky, producing a splendid 360° view across the "landscape" of the universe. The horizontal plane of the Milky Way galaxy is analogous to surrounding corn fields, with foreground branches and leaves equivalent to the turbulent bluish filaments of cold dust (CERN Courier May 2010 p9). The Magellanic Clouds are like nearby villages and the Andromeda galaxy, a bigger city behind. Distant quasars appear as white dots against the red-orange background, akin to distant snow-covered mountains on a sunset sky. Our view of the landscape around us is limited in distance by the atmospheric diffusion of sunlight, while Planck's microwave view is limited in time by the diffusion of primordial radiation by free electrons, only 380,000 years after the Big Bang.
Image credit: ESA/ LFI & HFI Consortia.