ESA's Planck mission starts well

Planck, ESA's mission to study the early universe has started imaging the sky. Located in L2, it has produced it's first images of the CMB(Cosmic Microwave Background).

Planck will use sensitive radio receivers operating with an accuracy down to the microkelvin and operating at extremely low temperatures to collect and characterise CMB radiation. As well as attempting to gain more understanding of the early universe, it also hopes to shed light on the nature of the mysterious dark matter. The image above shows the milky way in the visible spectrum and the CMB as the false colour strip.