This article was accepted into the corpus but its outbound wikilinks were never NER-processed — typical at the deepest BFS hop or when the run's entity cap was reached. No expansion funnel to show.
| Planck 2018 | |
|---|---|
| Name | Planck (2018 release) |
| Mission type | Astrophysics, Cosmology |
| Operator | European Space Agency |
| Launch date | 14 May 2009 |
| Launch site | Centre Spatial Guyanais |
| Instruments | High Frequency Instrument, Low Frequency Instrument |
| Mission duration | 2009–2013 (operations), 2018 (final data release) |
| Orbit | Lissajous orbit around Sun–Earth L2 |
Planck 2018 Planck 2018 presents the final full-mission data products and cosmological parameter constraints from the Planck satellite, consolidating observations gathered by the European Space Agency mission alongside analysis by the Planck Collaboration, the High Frequency Instrument, and the Low Frequency Instrument. The release synthesizes maps, likelihoods, and component-separation products informing measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature and polarization and updates constraints on parameters relevant to the Lambda-CDM model, inflationary scenarios, and extensions tested against external probes like Baryon Acoustic Oscillations and Type Ia supernovae.
The 2018 release represents the culmination of the Planck Collaboration's mission that followed launch from the Centre Spatial Guyanais and commissioning into a Lissajous orbit about Sun–Earth L2, with instrument operations integrating data from the High Frequency Instrument and the Low Frequency Instrument across full-mission timelines. This dataset was produced by teams at institutions such as European Space Agency, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale, and Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and underpins comparisons with results from missions like Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, experiments including Atacama Cosmology Telescope and South Pole Telescope, and surveys such as Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
The mission architecture combined the cryogenic High Frequency Instrument detectors, developed by consortia including NASA and Centre National d'Études Spatiales, with the coherent radiometers of the Low Frequency Instrument assembled by teams from Thales Alenia Space and Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica. The payload measured anisotropies across multiple frequency bands to separate the Cosmic Microwave Background from astrophysical signals associated with Milky Way components, extragalactic sources cataloged by Herschel Space Observatory, and diffuse emission characterized in ancillary maps from Infrared Astronomical Satellite and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer surveys.
The Planck 2018 processing pipeline incorporated timelines, calibration, mapmaking, and component separation refined by collaborations between European Space Agency teams, the Planck Collaboration working groups, and external analysis groups at University of Cambridge, Princeton University, and California Institute of Technology. Calibration referenced the orbital dipole measured relative to spacecraft ephemerides computed with input from Jet Propulsion Laboratory and planetary calibrators such as Mars and Jupiter. Component-separation algorithms included implementations by groups affiliated with Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, and University of Oxford, producing foreground-cleaned products evaluated through cross-correlation with catalogs from Two Micron All Sky Survey and Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.
Planck 2018 delivered refined parameter estimates for the Lambda-CDM model, reporting values for the Hubble constant, scalar spectral index, baryon density, and cold dark matter density that were compared with independent measurements from Baryon Acoustic Oscillations analyses by the BOSS collaboration, local distance ladder results from teams including SH0ES and Carnegie Observatories, and lensing reconstructions cross-checked with Dark Energy Survey and Hyper Suprime-Cam. Constraints on inflationary scenarios were tested against models such as single-field slow-roll inflation and compared to non-Gaussianity limits from methods developed at Institute for Advanced Study and Perimeter Institute. Neutrino-sector parameters and limits on effective relativistic species were evaluated alongside laboratory results from KATRIN and oscillation experiments including Super-Kamiokande.
Extensive foreground characterization involved modeling Galactic synchrotron, free-free, and thermal dust emission using inputs from teams at Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, NRAO, and Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, and catalogs of compact sources cross-referenced with Planck Catalogue of Compact Sources and surveys by Very Large Array and Atacama Pathfinder Experiment. Systematic error assessments addressed instrument polarization leakage, bandpass mismatch, and beam uncertainties investigated in collaboration with engineers from Thales Alenia Space and scientists at European Southern Observatory and were validated via null tests and end-to-end simulations developed with tools from CERN computing centers.
The 2018 data products released by the Planck Collaboration include frequency maps, component-separated CMB maps, full-mission likelihoods, lensing maps, and the final Planck Catalogue of Compact Sources archived by the European Space Agency and mirrored at data centers including NASA/IPAC, Leiden University, and Max Planck Society. These legacy datasets have been incorporated into cosmological analysis pipelines at institutions like University of Chicago, Harvard University, and Kavli Institute for Cosmology and serve as a standard reference for cross-comparison with ongoing surveys such as Euclid (spacecraft), Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and ground-based experiments like Simons Observatory.
Planck 2018's definitive measurements reshaped discussions within communities associated with cosmology, influencing theoretical work at institutes including Perimeter Institute, the Institute for Advanced Study, and Cambridge University, and guiding observational strategies for successors such as Simons Observatory and CMB-S4. Discrepancies highlighted between Planck-derived parameters and local determinations of the Hubble constant stimulated follow-up campaigns by teams at European Southern Observatory, Keck Observatory, and the Carnegie Observatories and motivated theoretical investigations into extensions like early dark energy explored at Princeton University and Stanford University.
Category:Cosmic Microwave Background Category:European Space Agency missions