The European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, dedicated to studying the early Universe and its subsequent evolution, was launched 14 May 2009 and has been scanning the microwave and submillimetre sky ...continuously since 12 August 2009. In March 2013, ESA and the Planck Collaboration released the initial cosmology products based on the first 15.5 months of Planck data, along with a set of scientific and technical papers and a web-based explanatory supplement. This paper gives an overview of the mission and its performance, the processing, analysis, and characteristics of the data, the scientific results, and the science data products and papers in the release. The science products include maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and diffuse extragalactic foregrounds, a catalogue of compact Galactic and extragalactic sources, and a list of sources detected through the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect. The likelihood code used to assess cosmological models against the Planck data and a lensing likelihood are described. Scientific results include robust support for the standard six-parameter ΛCDM model of cosmology and improved measurements of its parameters, including a highly significant deviation from scale invariance of the primordial power spectrum. The Planck values for these parameters and others derived from them are significantly different from those previously determined. Several large-scale anomalies in the temperature distribution of the CMB, first detected by WMAP, are confirmed with higher confidence. Planck sets new limits on the number and mass of neutrinos, and has measured gravitational lensing of CMB anisotropies at greater than 25σ. Planck finds no evidence for non-Gaussianity in the CMB. Planck’s results agree well with results from the measurements of baryon acoustic oscillations. Planck finds a lower Hubble constant than found in some more local measures. Some tension is also present between the amplitude of matter fluctuations (σ8) derived from CMB data and that derived from Sunyaev-Zeldovich data. The Planck and WMAP power spectra are offset from each other by an average level of about 2% around the first acoustic peak. Analysis of Planck polarization data is not yet mature, therefore polarization results are not released, although the robust detection of E-mode polarization around CMB hot and cold spots is shown graphically.
The design, error budget, and preliminary test results of a 50-56-GHz synthetic aperture radiometer demonstration system are presented. The instrument consists of a fixed 24-element array of ...correlation interferometers and is capable of producing calibrated images with 1deg spatial resolution within a 17deg wide field of view. This system has been built to demonstrate a performance and a design which can be scaled to a much larger geostationary Earth imager. As a baseline, such a system would consist of about 300 elements and would be capable of providing contiguous full hemispheric images of the Earth with 1 K of radiometric precision and 50-km spatial resolution. An error budget is developed around this goal and then tested with the demonstrator system. Errors are categorized as either scaling (i.e., complex gain) or additive (noise and bias) errors. Sensitivity to gain and/or phase error is generally proportional to the magnitude of the expected visibility, which is high only in the shortest baselines of the array, based on model simulations of the Earth as viewed from geostationary Earth orbit. Requirements range from approximately 0.5% and 0.3deg of amplitude and phase uncertainty, respectively, for the closest spacings at the center of the array, to about 4% and 2.5deg for the majority of the array. The latter requirements are demonstrated with our instrument using relatively simple references and antenna models, and by relying on the intrinsic stability and efficiency of the system. The 0.5% requirement (for the short baselines) is met by measuring the detailed spatial response (e.g., on the antenna range) and by using an internal noise diode reference to stabilize the response. This result suggests a hybrid image synthesis algorithm in which long baselines are processed by a fast Fourier transform and the short baselines are processed by a more precise (G-matrix) algorithm which can handle small anomalies among antenna and receiver responses. Visibility biases and other additive errors must be below about 1.5 mK on average, regardless of baseline. The bias requirement is largely met with a phase-shifting scheme applied to the local oscillator distribution of our demonstration system. Low mutual coupling among the horn antennas of our design is also critical to minimize the biases caused by crosstalk of receiver noise. Performance is validated by a three-way comparison between interference fringes measured on the antenna range, solar transit observations, and the system model.
Planck 2013 results. V. LFI calibration Atrio-Barandela, F.; Banday, A. J.; Battaner, E. ...
Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin),
11/2014, Letnik:
571
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
We discuss the methods employed to photometrically calibrate the data acquired by the Low Frequency Instrument on Planck. Our calibration is based on a combination of the orbital dipole plus the ...solar dipole, caused respectively by the motion of the Planck spacecraft with respect to the Sun and by motion of the solar system with respect to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) rest frame. The latter provides a signal of a few mK with the same spectrum as the CMB anisotropies and is visible throughout the mission. In this data releasewe rely on the characterization of the solar dipole as measured by WMAP. We also present preliminary results (at 44 GHz only) on the study of the Orbital Dipole, which agree with the WMAP value of the solar system speed within our uncertainties. We compute the calibration constant for each radiometer roughly once per hour, in order to keep track of changes in the detectors’ gain. Since non-idealities in the optical response of the beams proved to be important, we implemented a fast convolution algorithm which considers the full beam response in estimating the signal generated by the dipole. Moreover, in order to further reduce the impact of residual systematics due to sidelobes, we estimated time variations in the calibration constant of the 30 GHz radiometers (the ones with the largest sidelobes) using the signal of an internal reference load at 4 K instead of the CMB dipole. We have estimated the accuracy of the LFI calibration following two strategies: (1) we have run a set of simulations to assess the impact of statistical errors and systematic effects in the instrument and in the calibration procedure; and (2) we have performed a number of internal consistency checks on the data and on the brightness temperature of Jupiter. Errors in the calibration of this Planck/LFI data release are expected to be about 0.6% at 44 and 70 GHz, and 0.8% at 30 GHz. Both these preliminary results at low and high ℓ are consistent with WMAP results within uncertainties and comparison of power spectra indicates good consistency in the absolute calibration with HFI (0.3%) and a 1.4σ discrepancy with WMAP (0.9%).
We present the first results of a high-spectral-resolution survey of the carbon-rich evolved star IRC+10216 that was carried out with the HIFI spectrometer onboard Herschel. This survey covers all ...HIFI bands, with a spectral range from 488 to 1901 GHz. In this letter we focus on the band-1b spectrum, in a spectral range 554.5-636.5 GHz, where we identified 130 spectral features with intensities above 0.03 K and a signal-to-noise ratio >5. Detected lines arise from HCN, SiO, SiS, CS, CO, metal-bearing species and, surprisingly, silicon dicarbide (SiC2). We identified 55 SiC2 transitions involving energy levels between 300 and 900 K. By analysing these rotational lines, we conclude that SiC2 is produced in the inner dust formation zone, with an abundance of ~ 2 × 10-7 relative to molecular hydrogen. These SiC2 lines have been observed for the first time in space and have been used to derive an SiC2 rotational temperature of ~204 K and a source-averaged column density of ~ 6.4 × 1015 cm-2. Furthermore, the high quality of the HIFI data set was used to improve the spectroscopic rotational constants of SiC2.
The large-scale polarization explorer (LSPE) is a cosmology program for the measurement of large-scale curl-like features (B-modes) in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background. Its goal is ...to constrain the background of inflationary gravity waves traveling through the universe at the time of matter-radiation decoupling. The two instruments of LSPE are meant to synergically operate by covering a large portion of the northern microwave sky. LSPE/STRIP is a coherent array of receivers planned to be operated from the Teide Observatory in Tenerife, for the control and characterization of the low-frequency polarized signals of galactic origin; LSPE/SWIPE is a balloon-borne bolometric polarimeter based on 330 large throughput multi-moded detectors, designed to measure the CMB polarization at 150 GHz and to monitor the polarized emission by galactic dust above 200 GHz. The combined performance and the expected level of systematics mitigation will allow LSPE to constrain primordial B-modes down to a tensor/scalar ratio of
10
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2
. We here report the status of the STRIP pre-commissioning phase and the progress in the characterization of the key subsystems of the SWIPE payload (namely the cryogenic polarization modulation unit and the multi-moded TES pixels) prior to receiver integration.
We describe the data processing pipeline of the Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) data processing centre (DPC) to create and characterize full-sky maps based on the first 15.5 months of ...operations at 30, 44, and 70 GHz. In particular, we discuss the various steps involved in reducing the data, from telemetry packets through to the production of cleaned, calibrated timelines and calibrated frequency maps. Data are continuously calibrated using the modulation induced on the mean temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation by the proper motion of the spacecraft. Sky signals other than the dipole are removed by an iterative procedure based on simultaneous fitting of calibration parameters and sky maps. Noise properties are estimated from time-ordered data after the sky signal has been removed, using a generalized least squares map-making algorithm. A destriping code (Madam) is employed to combine radiometric data and pointing information into sky maps, minimizing the variance of correlated noise. Noise covariance matrices, required to compute statistical uncertainties on LFI and Planck products, are also produced. Main beams are estimated down to the ≈−20 dB level using Jupiter transits, which are also used for the geometrical calibration of the focal plane.
This paper presents the characterization of the in-flight beams, the beam window functions, and the associated uncertainties for the Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI). Knowledge of the beam ...profiles is necessary for determining the transfer function to go from the observed to the actual sky anisotropy power spectrum. The main beam distortions affect the beam window function, complicating the reconstruction of the anisotropy power spectrum at high multipoles, whereas the sidelobes affect the low and intermediate multipoles. The in-flight assessment of the LFI main beams relies on the measurements performed during Jupiter observations. By stacking the datafrom multiple Jupiter transits, the main beam profiles are measured down to –20 dB at 30 and 44 GHz, and down to –25 dB at 70 GHz. The main beam solid angles are determined to better than 0.2% at each LFI frequency band. The Planck pre-launch optical model is conveniently tuned to characterize the main beams independently of any noise effects. This approach provides an optical model whose beams fully reproduce the measurements in the main beam region, but also allows a description of the beams at power levels lower than can be achieved by the Jupiter measurements themselves. The agreement between the simulated beams and the measured beams is better than 1% at each LFI frequency band. The simulated beams are used for the computation of the window functions for the effective beams. The error budget for the window functions is estimated from both main beam and sidelobe contributions, and accounts for the radiometer bandshapes. The total uncertainties in the effective beam window functions are: 2% and 1.2% at 30 and 44 GHz, respectively (at ℓ ≈ 600), and 0.7% at 70 GHz (at ℓ ≈ 1000).
We present the current estimate of instrumental and systematic effect uncertainties for the Planck-Low Frequency Instrument relevant to the first release of the Planck cosmological results. We give ...an overview of the main effects and of the tools and methods applied to assess residuals in maps and power spectra. We also present an overall budget of known systematic effect uncertainties, which are dominated by sidelobe straylight pick-up and imperfect calibration. However, even these two effects are at least two orders of magnitude weaker than the cosmic microwave background fluctuations as measured in terms of the angular temperature power spectrum. A residual signal above the noise level is present in the multipole range ℓ < 20, most notably at 30 GHz, and is probably caused by residual Galactic straylight contamination. Current analysis aims to further reduce the level of spurious signals in the data and to improve the systematic effects modelling, in particular with respect to straylight and calibration uncertainties.
Developments in GaAs and InP transistor technology has had a large impact on science. With low noise and high frequency performance, these devices have revolutionized radio astronomy and Earth ...science, and changed the way that space science missions are designed and implemented. MMIC integration has shortened mission development times and enabling missions to be efficiently implemented in a cost-constrained environment. MMICs have also enabled a new generation of receiver arrays, creating a paradigm shift in experimental design. Some of this history will be discussed, citing specific examples of technology insertion and the impact on science.
Ground based tests of the GeoSTAR (geostationary synthetic thinned array radiometer) demonstrator instrument are reported which simulate the view of the Earth from geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO). ...The test used a 4-meter target disk mounted on a tower above the instrument to simulate the brightness of the earth with a contrasting cold background. Continuous observations at 50.3 GHz for over 100 hours, along with simultaneous atmospheric measurements from independent radiometers, yielded an excellent data set with which to test all aspects of the GeoSTAR calibration. This paper presents a preliminary look at these data, and presents an algorithm to remove the aliased background from the synthesized image.
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