European Space Agency in position to map Big Bang remnants

The European Space Agency’s Plank Satellite, launched May 14, is almost in position to begin observing remnants of the Big Bang, considered the beginning of our universe some 13.7 billion years ago.

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) of the heat from the Big Bang is still travelling freely through space today, according to researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics. By observing these fluctuations, astrophysicists can infer how galaxies, galaxy clusters and filaments were formed.

The Planck satellite is being positioned at the second Lagrangian point (a coordinate system used in both mechanic and quantum physics) of the Sun-Earth-Moon system, located about 1.5 million kilometers away from the Earth. The satellite will spin around its own axis, pointing towards the Sun, with each rotation recording another strip of the sky and mapping the sky’s temperature to an accuracy of about one millionth of a degree.

Planck will scan the entire sky to build the most accurate map ever of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the relic radiation from the Big Bang. The spacecraft will spin at 1 rotation per minute around an axis offset by ~85° so that the observed sky region will trace a large circle on the sky. As the spin axis follows the Sun the circle observed by the instruments sweeps through the sky at a rate of 1° per day.

Planck will take about six months to complete a full scan of the sky, allowing the creation of two complete sky maps during the nominal mission lifetime (about 15 months) Credit: ESA (image by C. Carreau)

The physicists will study the formation of galaxies using the Sunyaev Zeldovich effect, the heating of CMB photons by scattering in the atmosphere of galaxy clusters. Due to this effect distant galaxy clusters become visible as shadows in front the cosmic microwave background.

"Planck will provide the most precise data on the early universe ever,” said Rashid Sunyaev, director of the astrophysics center and a pioneer of CMB research, in a written statement. “We have never been so close to the Big Bang."

The Max Planck Society, headquartered in Munich, Germany, shares the costs of a number of large pieces of international equipment and runs its own major experiment and measurement facilities. Max Planck scientists collaborate in the world's largest labs in high energy physics and astronomy as well as in international space missions.