PLANCK

Planck is an ESA satellite that delivers highly sensitive maps of the intensity and polarization of the entire sky between 30 and 850 GHz.
 

Planck is designed to image the anisotropies of the Cosmic Background Radiation Field over the whole sky, with unprecedented sensitivity and angular resolution. It is providing a major source of information relevant to several cosmological and astrophysical issues, such as testing theories of the early universe, the origin of cosmic structure and the physics of the interstellar medium.

Planck is composed of two instruments:

  • - the Low Frequency Instrument (or LFI) -­‐ an array of tuned radio receivers, based on HEMT amplifier technology, and covering the frequency range ~30 -­‐ 70 GHz;
  • - the High Frequency Instrument (or HFI) -­‐ an array of bolometers cooled to 100mK covering the frequency range ~100 -­‐ 850 GHz.

The simultaneous mapping of the sky over a wide frequency range (30 to 850 GHz with angular resolution 30’ to 5’) by PLANCK permits a separation of Galactic and extragalactic foregrounds from the primordial cosmological signal to exquisite precision over much of the sky.
 

The Principal Investigator of HFI is Jean-­‐Loup Puget, member of the IAS. The IAS contributes heavily to several aspects of HFI related to the instrumentation (calibration, mechanics and thermics), the data processing, the data analysis, and several Science Working Groups.
 

Several scientific products, with heavy IAS involvement, that go along with the official 2013 release products, are delivered on this site (see Download). Planck SZ cluster related informations are distributed as part of the szcluster-­‐db (here).