Big Bang telescope probe captures first image of our universe
This incredible image released by the ESA from the Planck telescope shows the main disc of our Galaxy running across the centre of the picture / AFP
A SPACE telescope that reveals how the universe came to life after the Big Bang returned its first image this morning.
The Planck telescope, which took 16 years to build and cost €700 million ($1.04bn), was launched almost a million miles into space last May.
The European Space Agency hoped it would provide astronomers with new data on the Big Bang enigma.
Its first full image showed the Milky Way across the centre of the sky and Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), a faint relic radiation created just after the Big Bang, about 13.7 billion years ago.
The CMB was visible in the mottled yellow patches of the background, and its signal will be enhanced by further research over the coming months.
“Planck has ‘painted’ us its first spectacular picture of the Universe," said David Parker, director of space science and exploration at the UK Space Agency, which partly funds the telescope.
"This single image captures both our own cosmic backyard - the Milky Way galaxy that we live in - but also the subtle imprint of the Big Bang from which the whole universe emerged.”
David Clements, of Imperial College London, and a member of the Planck team, said: “Just looking at the pictures you can tell we’re seeing new things about the structure of our galaxy.
"Once we’ve done that, and stripped away these foregrounds, then it’s on to the Cosmic Microwave Background and the glow of the Big Bang itself.”
Scientists planned to spend two years studying the CMB radiation, which Planck was observing in unprecedented detail, for clues to what happened at the dawn of time.
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