The Planck mission

Planck

From the early universe to the physics of the interstellar medium


The Planck mission, after COBE and WMAP, is a third generation space mission to observe temperature fluctuations of the Cosmic Microwave Background. I started working on Planck in 1994, fifteen years before it was launched from the French Guiana Space Center in Kourou, on May 14th 2009.

The Planck spacecraft has onboard two instruments, the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI), observing the sky at 3 frequencies between 30 and 70 GHz, and the High Frequency Instrument (HFI), a sensitive bolometer instrument observing with channels centred at 100, 143, 217, 353, 545 and 857 GHz. HFI detectors are cooled to 100 mK. My work is primarily connected with the HFI.

All Planck channels, except the two highest frequency ones at 545 and 857 GHz, are polarization-sensitive.


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