The Planck space telescope, which is surveying the complete sky in four huge sweeps, has almost completed its first scan.
Revolving in orbit, Planck obtains data of the sky in strips, approximately the reverse of a chef flaking an apple in one long, thin strip.
This image, taken as of the scan, gives you an idea about the structure and form of dust clouds inside about 500 light-years of the sun. The brilliant band in this far-infrared image is the Milky Way’s spiral disk. On top of that, you can see the cold dust arching upwards. The tint palette here is a bit strange: Reddish tones are colder, whereas white tones are warmer.
The Planck task, initiated on May 2009 by the European Space Agency, is creating the best-ever map of the cosmic environment radiation left over from the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.
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