Photo of the Week » Microwave Magic
Milky Way cold dust, Planck image
Milky Way cold dust, Planck image. Colour-coded image of cold dust in the Milky Way as seen by the Planck space observatory. This image covers an area of the sky that is around 55 degrees across, and was obtained by the High Frequency Instrument (HFI). The microwave wavelength observed is 350 micrometres. The dark horizontal band is the Milky Way’s galactic plane. Red indicates hotter dust, and yellow cooler dust, though any dust radiating in the microwave region is considered ‘cold’. Planck was launched in May 2009 to study the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the radiation left over from the Big Bang.
