version 0.1.2 (BETA)

Chromoscope

Constellations
Labels
Overlay
Dust Pol overlay
Dust overlay
Low frequency overlay
Synchrotron Pol
CO overlay
Mask (cosm.)
Point Sources
Lensing
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Opacity: 60%

Dust

Most of the dust seen by Planck is very cold, at temperatures as low as around −260 C, and as a result glows in Planck's high frequencies (particularly 353 GHz and above). It is cold, dense clumps of dust and gas that mark the earliest stages of the birth of stars.

Although the dust is concentrated in the disc of our Galaxy, Planck has mapped its distribution all over the sky, showing structure at high Galactic latitudes (looking up or down out of the plane) of the Galaxy. Many other galaxies also contain similar dust, but most of them have been removed from the map of dust shown here.

The emission from the dust seen by Planck must be removed from the maps before cosmological analysis, but is of great interested to astronomers studying star formation in our own Milky Way.

Dust Polarisation

The cold dust grains in our galaxy are aligned to the magnetic field, and this causes the light it emits to be slightly polarised. The direction of this polarisation tells us the orientation of the Galaxy's magnetic field.

The texture used to display the polarisation direction was originally produced by Marc-Antoine Meville-Deschenes (IAS Paris).

The Milky Way is shown across the middle. The north pole of the Galaxy is towards the top. Use the mouse to drag the sky around. Want more info? Watch a quick tour (opens in this window). The keyboard controls are: Created by Stuart Lowe, Rob Simpson, and Chris North. You can also download it to run locally.

ESA/Planck/HFI

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This page lets you browse the maps that Planck has made of the sky at nine microwave and mm-wave wavelengths, using the Chromoscope interface. The sky looks different when viewed at different wavelengths. As well as the Cosmic Microwave Background, it also shows emission from our own Galaxy and others. Looking at all these wavelengths allows Planck to identify and separate the light from a wide range of objects. If you get stuck, click "Help" in the bottom left.

Using the menu in the bottom left you can switch between browsing the images by frequency or by the various components, as well as adding labels and overlay layers. To more easily compare wavelengths, you can reorder them in the top-right bar.

Chromoscope is kindly funded by the Cardiff University Astronomy and Astronomy Instrumentation Groups.
857 GHz545 GHz353 GHz217 GHz143 GHz100 GHz70 GHz44 GHz30 GHzCompositeVisible
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Polarisation