ESA: Planck spies massive dust clouds

BBC News - Planck spies massive dust clouds

Europe's Planck observatory has given another brief glimpse of its work.

The space telescope's main goal is to map the "oldest light" in the Universe, but this data is being kept under wraps until the surveying is complete.
Instead, Planck scientists have released a snapshot of the colossal swathes of cold dust that spread through the Milky Way galaxy.

Such imagery will be very useful to astronomers seeking to understand star formation.

It is in the regions of space that are most dense in terms of gas and dust that are likely to give rise to new suns.

It's the 'reject' for some people, but the 'treasure' for others - Dr Jan Tauber, Esa Planck project scientist

The latest Planck pictures will be of special interest to researchers working on the European Space Agency's (Esa) other great telescope, Herschel.

This observatory is investigating processes that trigger the creation of stars.

Dr Jan Tauber is the Esa project scientist on the Planck mission.

He told BBC News: "The latest release shows how well Planck works on its own, but it also emphasises the complementarity with Herschel; with Planck looking at the whole sky at very large scales, and Herschel zooming in and making very detailed investigations of a much smaller part of the sky."

Planck and Herschel were launched last May and sent to an observing position some 1.5 million km from Earth.

Herschel sees the sky at far-infrared wavelengths. Planck, on the other hand, sees the Universe at radio wavelengths.