The Planck mission

TL;DR

The paper discusses the Planck mission's goal of precisely measuring CMB temperature anisotropies, detailing the data processing, results, and cosmological implications from the 2013 findings.

Contribution

It provides an overview of the measurement process, data analysis, and key cosmological insights derived from the Planck 2013 results.

Findings

Full sky maps at 9 frequencies were produced.

CMB temperature anisotropies and power spectrum were extracted.

Main cosmological implications of the CMB data are discussed.

Abstract

These lecture from the 100th Les Houches summer school on "Post-planck cosmology" of July 2013 discuss some aspects of the Planck mission, whose prime objective was a very accurate measurement of the temperature anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). We announced our findings a few months ago, on March 21$^{st}$, 2013. I describe some of the relevant steps we took to obtain these results, sketching the measurement process, how we processed the data to obtain full sky maps at 9 different frequencies, and how we extracted the CMB temperature anisotropies map and angular power spectrum. I conclude by describing some of the main cosmological implications of the statistical characteristics of the CMB we found. Of course, this is a very much shortened and somewhat biased view of the \Planck\ 2013 results, written with the hope that it may lead some of the students to consult the original papers.