Planck Spacecraft picture maps entire Universe. Strikingly beautiful image and concept.

Greetings! fellow ATS members and viewers alike.

Just finished up reading a small article listed in Pop Sci magazine's web page regarding the Planck Spacecraft. Apparantly a team of scientists from the European Space Agency have managed to utilize the Planck telescope's imaging prowess and enable it to stitch together a picture map of the entire universe.


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/823f170f7894.jpg[/atsimg]

"While other satellite observatories zoom in on exoplanets or snap photos of star birth on faraway galaxies, the European Space Agency’s Planck Telescope is studying the bigger picture. After a year in service, the observatory has surveyed the cosmos and provided researchers with its first all-sky image, a snapshot of the entire universe as viewed from Planck’s position in the sky."

The "entire Universe", can that be right? I'm not sure to be honest. However I'd like to discuss this concept, and see what other ATS member think. According to the quote above, it seems like it is. But I'm still skeptical. Also, take note of the shape of the picture map itself in the first illustration posted. What shape do you perceive it to be? A flat circular disk, a 3D oval, etc? Upon first glance I immediately noted it to be a 3D oval; which strikes the question what then would be on the opposite side of it? Any opinions on this would be great!

But alas the article is a truly fascinating read for anyone interested in Space and the Universe as a whole. Featuring many colorful paragraphs such as:

"The bright disk running through the middle of the pic is our own Milky Way Galaxy. The wispy blue trails of gas and dust protruding from the center disk are regions where stars are violently forming as the makings of the universe come together. But most interesting to astronomers are the fringes at the top and bottom of the image, where the yellow and magenta regions represent the oldest light in the universe, leftover from the Big Bang that exploded the cosmos into existence some 13.7 billion years ago."

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/519218746066.jpg[/atsimg]



Pop Sci article: www.popsci.com...

Planck Spacecraft: en.wikipedia.org...(spacecraft), sci.esa.int...


[edit on 7/9/2010 by agent violet]

Small image is small. Here's the bigger version. Great find.

Larger image

Hii and thanks for the response! That larger image you linked to is beautiful!

Thanks for posting

[edit on 7/9/2010 by agent violet]

reply to post by agent violet

The "entire Universe", can that be right? I'm not sure to be honest.

That would include all the universe visible at 13.5 billion (light) years or less. We can't see beyond this either because there is nothing or because that is the limit of our detection capabilities. I remember reading that there may be something beyond based on a background radiation, can't remember what type??

Even though theres been 5 other topics in the past 5 days, here's a video that somewhat explains the process.

Nice Photo. the Universe must be larger than 10 billion light years across.
noun ( the universe)
all existing matter and space considered as a whole; the cosmos. The universe is believed to be at least 10 billion light years in diameter and contains a vast number of galaxies; it has been expanding since its creation in the big bang about 13 billion years ago.
• a particular sphere of activity,

years from now a new Columbus will discover that the universe has no ending. or is a multi-universe of many infinite universes.

reply to post by agent violet


S+F this is truly inspiring

reminds me of COBE in the 90s

It reminds me of a highly iterated julia set.

Originally posted by agent violet
The "entire Universe", can that be right? I'm not sure to be honest. However I'd like to discuss this concept, and see what other ATS member think. According to the quote above, it seems like it is. But I'm still skeptical. Also, take note of the shape of the picture map itself in the first illustration posted. What shape do you perceive it to be?

I'm not sure if it's a Mollweide projection, but it sure looks like one. Click the link and you'll see what the Earth looks like on such a projection...it's a way to map a spherical feature onto a flat piece of paper or computer screen.

Consider a beach ball, of you photograph it from the outside, looking in, that's how the Mollweide projection of the Earth is represented.

Conversely, the view of the satellite would be as if it's at the center of the beach ball, taking a picture in all directions facing outward, but it's still basically a sphere.

Of course we don't know the exact shape of the universe, all we can see is the Observable universe, a sphere a little over 13 billion light years in radius, but we expect the current universe extends beyond that sphere.

The actual shape of the Universe may or may not be spherical. However, ...
the observable universe appears from our perspective to be spherical.

Instead of saying it mapped the whole universe, it might be more accurate to say, it photographed what it could see from its location aiming in every conceivable direction.

Nice image.

[edit on 9-7-2010 by Arbitrageur]

isnt that just our milkyway ?

reply to post by icepack

no. From the OP link:

By the time ESA researchers are through processing the data, they’ll have removed the Milky Way, revealing the best look of the CMBR ever obtained. From that, astronomers should be able to glean lots of data regarding the early life of the universe and the means by which the current state of things came to be.

The milky way is a dominant feature but they are going to remove it to see the CMBR better

Originally posted by icepack
isnt that just our milkyway ?

Yes, I think it is.. This isn't the entire universe:

linky

The whole universe would look something like this:

linky

(no, not in a cube but you get the idea)

[edit on 12-7-2010 by warlok]

Imagine all the life in that......
blows your frakkin mind it does....

Originally posted by rufusthestuntbum
reply to post by agent violet

 

S+F this is truly inspiring

reminds me of COBE in the 90s

it only is only a map of the radiation received at the detector.

radiation stopped by dust clouds makes it incomplete map and useless.