Planck releases its first Universe image

London, Jul 6: The European Space Agency has released its first ever image of the entire universe produced by the space telescope Planck on Monday, Jul 5.

Launched in 2009 by ESA under € 600 million project, Planck is a space observatory designed to observe the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background over the entire sky, using high sensitivity and angular resolution.

The image produced by the Planck depicts the Milky Way, lots of cosmic dust and a galactic web where new stars are, or were, being formed.

“This is the moment that Planck was conceived for. The image and its remarkable quality is a tribute to the engineers who built and have operated it," says ESA Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, David Southwood.

The image produced by Planck will help to study how Universe came to be and how it works now. Apart from this it will also help to study the life after the Big Bang which took place 13.7 billion years ago.

Planck is expected to yield definitive data on a number of astronomical issues by 2012.

OneIndia News.