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Herschel and Planck working together

Herschel was in the same rocket as the Planck satellite – an European mission designed to study the Cosmic Microwave Background, the low level energy which pervades through space. The CMB is a relic of the Big Bang (it was formed when the Universe was at about 3000 degrees hot and only 400,000 years old, but we still see it traveling through space to our detectors today.   Although Planck is designed to use this relic light to tell us about the conditions in the early Universe, and indeed the future of our Universe, it will also provide valuable information on structures in our own Milky Way.  The image on the left is from Planck, it also traces the coldest dust in our Galaxy and in this image we can see the large-scale structure of the gas and dust filling the Milky Way.   Two of our sub-millimetre bands with Herschel also coincide with the bands used by the Planck All Sky Survey. 

 

 

Image Credit: ESA, HFI and LFI Consortia