Planck studies minute fluctuations in the temperature of light from when the universe was 370,000 years old.
Orange areas are slightly warmer than average, and blue areas are slightly cooler.
Mass and gravity
As ancient light travels toward Earth, it is warped and distorted by gravity. Planck measured this distortion to create a map of mass in the universe. Areas with more mass appear darker, while areas of the universe with less mass appear lighter. Gray areas are obscured by the disk of the Milky Way.
Temperature anomalies
The new map confirms that temperature patterns in the early universe were slightly asymmetrical. The northern hemisphere of the universe (above the Sun) appears slightly cooler than the southern hemisphere (below the Sun), as shown in this enhanced image. An unexpectedly large cold spot is circled in black.
PREVIOUS MISSIONS
Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE)
Launched in 1989, COBE was the first satellite to search for this ancient light, called cosmic microwave background. Measurements taken during the mission hinted at how matter was distributed in the early universe and lent support to the Big Bang theory.
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP)
A second mission, launched in 2001, measured the cosmic background radiation in detail, and contributed to the understanding of dark matter and the early expansion of the universe. Images taken by the Planck satellite, launched in 2009, have more than twice the resolution of WMAP.
Images by ESA, NASA, JPL-Caltech and the WMAP mission
This artist's animation depicts the 'life' of a photon, or particle of light, as it travels across space and time, from the very early universe to the Planck satellite. By creating maps of the oldest light in the universe, Planck scientists are learning about the epic journey of light through the cosmos. The mission's maps showing this ancient light, called the cosmic microwave background, have revealed the most precise information yet about the universe's fundamental traits, such as its age, contents and the seeds of all structure, without which we would not exist.
The light's journey begins just moments after the big bang that created our universe 13.8 billion years ago. At that time, the universe was a hot plasma of electrons, protons and photons (green and red balls, and blue linear particles, respectively). The light repeatedly bounces off electrons, and as result can't travel very far. Later, about 370,000 years after the big bang, the universe cools enough for the electrons and protons to get together to form hydrogen atoms. Electrons no longer get in the way of the light, and it is free to travel.
Hubble Breaks Record in Search for Farthest Supernova
This is a NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope view looking long ago and far away at a supernova that exploded over 10 billion years ago — the most distant Type Ia supernova ever detected. The supernova’s light is just arriving at Earth, having travelled more than 10 billion light-years (redshift 1.914) across space. Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Riess (STScI and JHU), and D. Jones and S. Rodney (JHU). [ http://www.universetoday.com/101240/hubble-telescope-breaks-record-for-finding-most-distant-supernova/ ]
These three frames show the supernova dubbed SN UDS10Wil, or SN Wilson, the most distant Type Ia supernova ever detected. The leftmost frame in this image shows just the supernova’s host galaxy, before the violent explosion. The middle frame shows the galaxy after the supernova had gone off, and the third frame indicates the brightness of the supernova alone. Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Riess (STScI and JHU), and D. Jones and S. Rodney (JHU) [ http://www.universetoday.com/101240/hubble-telescope-breaks-record-for-finding-most-distant-supernova/ ]
News Release Number: STScI-2013-11 April 4, 2013 10:00 AM (EDT)
News release from NASA April 4, 2013
J.D. Harrington Headquarters, Washington 202-358-5241 j.d.harrington@nasa.gov
Ray Villard Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md. 410-338-4514 villard@stsci.edu
RELEASE: 13-086
WASHINGTON — NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found the farthest supernova so far of the type used to measure cosmic distances. Supernova UDS10Wil, nicknamed SN Wilson after American President Woodrow Wilson, exploded more than 10 billion years ago.
SN Wilson belongs to a special class called Type Ia supernovae. These bright beacons are prized by astronomers because they provide a consistent level of brightness that can be used to measure the expansion of space. They also yield clues to the nature of dark energy, the mysterious force accelerating the rate of expansion.
"This new distance record holder opens a window into the early universe, offering important new insights into how these stars explode," said David O. Jones of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., an astronomer and lead author on the paper detailing the discovery. "We can test theories about how reliable these detonations are for understanding the evolution of the universe and its expansion."
The discovery was part of a three-year Hubble program, begun in 2010, to survey faraway Type Ia supernovae and determine whether they have changed during the 13.8 billion years since the explosive birth of the universe. Astronomers took advantage of the sharpness and versatility of Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 to search for supernovae in near-infrared light and verify their distance with spectroscopy. Leading the work is Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., and Johns Hopkins University.
Finding remote supernovae provides a powerful method to measure the universe's accelerating expansion. So far, Riess's team has uncovered more than 100 supernovae of all types and distances, looking back in time from 2.4 billion years to more than 10 billion years. Of those new discoveries, the team has identified eight Type Ia supernovae, including SN Wilson, that exploded more than 9 billion years ago.
"The Type Ia supernovae give us the most precise yardstick ever built, but we're not quite sure if it always measures exactly a yard," said team member Steve Rodney of Johns Hopkins University. "The more we understand these supernovae, the more precise our cosmic yardstick will become."
Although SN Wilson is only 4 percent more distant than the previous record holder, it pushes roughly 350 million years farther back in time. A separate team led by David Rubin of the U.S. Energy Department's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California announced the previous record just three months ago.
Astronomers still have much to learn about the nature of dark energy and how Type Ia supernovae explode.
By finding Type Ia supernovae so early in the universe, astronomers can distinguish between two competing explosion models. In one model the explosion is caused by a merger between two white dwarfs. In another model, a white dwarf gradually feeds off its partner, a normal star, and explodes when it accretes too much mass.
The team's preliminary evidence shows a sharp decline in the rate of Type Ia supernova blasts between roughly 7.5 billion years ago and more than 10 billion years ago. The steep drop-off favors the merger of two white dwarfs because it predicts that most stars in the early universe are too young to become Type Ia supernovae.
"If supernovae were popcorn, the question is how long before they start popping?" Riess said. "You may have different theories about what is going on in the kernel. If you see when the first kernels popped and how often they popped, it tells you something important about the process of popping corn."
Knowing the type of trigger for Type Ia supernovae also will show how quickly the universe enriched itself with heavier elements such as iron. These exploding stars produce about half of the iron in the universe, the raw material for building planets, and life.
The team's results have been accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., conducts Hubble science operations. The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc., in Washington operates STScI.
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