An overview of the Planck mission

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the ESA Planck mission and its scientific promises. Planck is equipped with a 1.5-m effective aperture telescope with two actively-cooled instruments observing the sky in nine frequency channels from 30 GHz to 857 GHz: the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) operating at 20 K with pseudo-correlation radiometers, and the High Frequency Instrument (HFI) with bolometers operating at 100 mK. After the successful launch in May 2009, Planck has already mapped the sky twice (at the time of writing this review) with the expected behavior and it is planned to complete at least two further all-sky surveys. The first scientific results, consisting of an Early Release Compact Source Catalog (ERCSC) and in about twenty papers on instrument performance in flight, data analysis pipeline, and main astrophysical results, will be released on January 2011. The first publications of the main cosmological implications are expected in 2012. © 2011 International Astronomical Union.