A European space mission, which is using high-tech equipment developed at The University of Manchester to unlock the secrets of the Universe, has sent back its first images from space.
(Media-Newswire.com) - A European space mission, which is using high-tech equipment developed at The University of Manchester to unlock the secrets of the Universe, has sent back its first images from space. The Planck observatory has successfully completed its initial test survey of the sky, confirming the scientific instruments and the sophisticated cooling system, all of which the UK played a key role in building, are working well.
Following the successful survey, Planck has now embarked on its 15 month mission to map the structure of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation ( CMB ) – the relic radiation from the Big Bang.
Engineers, technicians, academics and students at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics designed and built super sensitive ‘cryogenic low noise amplifiers’ for the Low Frequency Instrument ( LFI ) on board the Planck satellite, with help from the University of Birmingham and The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.
Planck’s ‘first light’ survey, which started in August and was a two-week period during which Planck surveyed the sky continuously, produced maps of a strip of the sky, one for each of Planck’s nine frequencies.
The plane of our own Milky Way galaxy can be seen running across the middle of the image, and is visible in the Planck data as the bright red regions. Away from the plane, the tiny fluctuations in the CMB can shine through, and these are the main target of the Planck mission.
The properties of these fluctuations provide information about the earliest moments of the Universe's existence and how it evolved to become what we see today.
Planck is looking with finer resolution and greater sensitivity than previous satellites, and will allow the details of the Universe's age and composition to be calculated more precisely than ever before.
Professor Richard Davis of The University of Manchester and principal investigator of Planck’s UK-built LFI instrument, said, “In the 16 years since Planck’s development started, this is the most exciting time. The wonderful thing is that Planck from its vantage point one million miles from Earth is now producing images of the creation of the Universe, the so-called Big Bang, with a clarity never seen by mankind.”
The Planck satellite was launched along with the Herschel satellite on 14 May 2009 from Kourou, French Guiana, on an Ariane 5 rocket.
Professor Keith Mason, Chief Executive of the Science and Technology Facilities Council, which provides the UK funding for Planck, said, “It’s great news that Planck is operating so effectively. UK researchers have invested a great deal of time and skill in this mission and we are all eager to find out what secrets Planck will reveal.”
The UK is playing a major role in the Planck mission, with funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council ( STFC ).
Notes for editors For more information about The University of Manchester’s role in the Planck observatory, please contact Alex Waddington, Media Relations Officer, Tel 0161 275 8387 or 07717 881569.
A map of the whole sky at optical wavelengths shows a prominent horizontal band which is the light shining from our own Milky Way, seen in profile from our vantage point. The superposed false-colour strip shows the area of the sky mapped by Planck during the First Light Survey. The colour scale indicates the magnitude of the deviations of the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background from its average value, as measured by Planck at a frequency close to the peak of the CMB spectrum ( red is hotter and blue is colder ). The large red strips trace radio emission from the Milky Way, whereas the small bright spots high above the galactic plane correspond to emission from the Cosmic Microwave Background itself. The two squares indicate the location of the detailed images shown in the next figures.
Credit: ESA, LFI & HFI Consortia ( Planck ), Background image: Axel Mellinger.
UK role in Planck
The UK is playing a major role in the Planck mission, with funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council ( STFC ). The UK is the second largest financial contributor to the ESA Science Programme which builds and launches space missions such as Planck using leading-edge technology from the UK space industry. In addition, STFC has invested £17.4M to build instrumentation for Planck.
A number of UK institutes and companies form part of the consortium building the two focal plane instruments, HFI ( High Frequency Instrument ) and LFI ( Low Frequency Instrument ). The Jodrell Bank Observatory at The University of Manchester has produced critical elements of the LFI receiver modules. Cardiff University, STFC RAL and SEA have been involved with hardware development for HFI, while various UK research groups including Imperial College London and University of Cambridge form the London Planck Analysis Centre and Cambridge Planck Analysis Centre. These groups are involved with data analysis and simulation for the HFI data analysis and simulation software.
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