ESA's Planck mission has revealed that our Galaxy contains previously undiscovered islands of cold gas and a mysterious haze of microwaves. These results give scientists new treasure to mine and take them closer to revealing the blueprint of cosmic structure. The new results are being presented this week at an international conference in Bologna, Italy, where astronomers from around the world are discussing the mission's intermediate results. Read more
Planck's HFI completes its survey of early Universe
The High Frequency Instrument on ESA's Planck mission has completed its survey of the remnant light from the Big Bang. The sensor ran out of coolant on Saturday as expected, ending its ability to detect this faint energy. Read more
One of Europe's great astronomical ventures is coming to a close.
The Planck telescope, put in space to map the oldest light in the Universe, has run out of the helium coolant that keeps it in full working order. Engineers expect the observatory's systems to start to warm from their ultra-frigid state in the coming days, blinding one of its two instruments. Read more
Scientists of the "Planck" satellite mission present first results in a conference in Paris
In its first year in operation, the "Planck Surveyor" satellite has achieved impressive results: a catalogue with 15000 celestial objects such as galaxy clusters, quasars, radio galaxies, nearby galaxies and galactic dust clouds, 25 scientific papers, as well as the most precise measurement of the far infrared background to date, which reveals star formation in the early universe. The Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics developed important software components for Planck and is heavily involved in the scientific interpretation of the mission data. Read more
European astronomers have spoken of what they call stunning discoveries made by the Planck Telescope, deployed a million kilometres away in space. The telescope has so far identified 15,000 new objects, among them clusters of galaxies that are some of the largest cosmic structures ever seen. Read more
Astronomers at The University of Manchesters Jodrell Bank Observatory played a key role in the worldwide teams searching for an exciting variety of astronomical finds, from massive galaxy clusters to new, unidentified objects. Observing both our Galaxy and emissions from the distant reaches of space, Planck is a flagship mission of the UK Space Agency, which funds the UK's involvement in both of Planck's scientific instruments. Astronomers from around the UK are now heavily involved in the operation of Planck's two scientific instruments and in understanding the images and data it is now producing. Read more
Scientists from ESA and several European astronomy institutes will present the first data and results from ESA's Planck mission today. The Early Release Compact Source Catalogue contains thousands of sources detected by Planck, from radio to far-infrared wavelengths, ranging from dense, cold clouds embedded in nearby star-forming regions to distant, supermassive clusters of galaxies. The Webcast will begin at 12:00 CET and be available for replay shortly afterwards. Read more
Cela faisait 18 mois que la communauté scientifique attendait les données relevées par Planck, le satellite de l'Agence Spatiale Européenne. L'heure des premiers résultats scientifiques a sonné. La première édition du catalogue de sources compactes (ERCSC, Early Release Compact Sources Catalogue) a été publiée et présentée ce 11 janvier, avec plusieurs milliers de sources détectées par Planck. Read more (French)
This week (27th Dec) marks 500 days since Planck started scanning the sky on 14th August 2009. Once every minute, Planck has spun on its axis to map rings around the sky. Now well into its third sky survey, Planck is more than half-way through its mission, and is mapping the sky at nine different wavelengths bands ranging from 0.3mm up to 1cm. Read more