PLANCK

Planck is an international mission led by ESA , the European Space Agency, with significant contribution by NASA, the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Launched on May 14^th 2009, Planck has mapped the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation of the universe with the greatest precision and detail of any all-sky microwave survey to date, across  nine frequency bands .

Planck is the fourth generation of satellites to successfully map the CMB, coming after the COBE and WMAP and the Russian Relikt satellites.

The PLANCK mission looks back at the very dawn of time to measure the the Cosmic Microwave Radiation of the Universe, the oldest light we can see, coming from a time when the Universe was somewhere between 350,000 and 400,000 years old – about 13.7 billion years ago.

The minute temperature differences across the sky, on the order of a few millionths of a degree, that have been measured by Planck correspond to density variations in the earliest moments of the Universe. Thus, accurately measuring the cosmic microwave background radiation can give us information about the very young Universe.

Click HERE for a convenient summary page of results and links.  

Click HERE for a new CMB Simulator by Stuart Lowe, Planck Scientist from the UK.

Click HERE for a very preliminary look & listen to our Sounds of the CMB page.

NOTE: You must use Google Chrome to access this application.

On 21st March 2013 Planck released the first set of cosmological results. Click on the following link to see the data release conference we held at UCSB:

For more information about the Planck Mission, please visit:

The Official PLANCK Page at the European Space Agency

The NASA PLANCK Page at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California

Planck Education & Outreach

Planck Main E/PO Website

Links to Planck Educational Materials at UCSB

• Planck Education Group Publications
• Planck Mission Simulation
• Sounds of the CMB Simulation
• Labs for a Lambda-dominated Universe