An Introduction to the Planck Mission

TL;DR

The paper introduces the ESA's Planck Mission, highlighting its advanced instrumentation for precise measurements of the CMB anisotropies, which are crucial for understanding the universe's early conditions and large-scale structure.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the mission's goals, technology, data analysis methods, and key cosmological findings from the Planck satellite.

Findings

High-precision measurements of CMB anisotropies

Refined estimates of cosmological parameters

Insights into the early universe physics

Abstract

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is the oldest light in the universe. It is seen today as black body radiation at a near-uniform temperature of 2.73K covering the entire sky. This radiation field is not perfectly uniform, but includes within it temperature anisotropies of order delta(T)/T ~ 10E-5. Physical processes in the early universe have left their fingerprints in these CMB anisotropies, which later grew to become the galaxies and large scale structure we see today. CMB anisotropy observations are thus a key tool for cosmology. The Planck Mission was the European Space Agency's (ESA) probe of the CMB. Its unique design allowed CMB anisotropies to be measured to greater precision over a wider range of scales than ever before. This article provides an introduction to the Planck Mission, including its goals and motivation, its instrumentation and technology, the physics of the CMB, how the contaminating astrophysical foregrounds were overcome, and the key cosmological results that this mission has so far produced.