1. of Montgomery College Planetarium
Whisper of Creation
By Dr. Harold Williams
of Montgomery College Planetarium
Title slide

2. Measuring the Beginning
Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE)
John C. Mather & George Smoot Physics Nobel Prize 2006
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP)

3. Launch of the COBE spacecraft November 18, 1989.

4. COBE parts

5. Famous COBE microwave fluctuation Map
"Cosmic microwave background temperature data were extracted from the released FITS files and then combined into two linear combinations. The first is a weighted sum of the 53 and 90 GHz channels which gives the highest signal-to-noise ratio for cosmic temperature variations but includes the Milky Way Galaxy as well. In the second linear combination, a multiple of the 31 GHz map is subtracted from a weighted sum of the 53 plus 90 GHz channels to give a "reduced map" that gives zero response to the observed Galaxy, zero response to free-free emission, but full response to variations in the cosmic temperature. These maps have been smoothed with a 7 degree beam, giving an effective angular resolution of 10 degrees. An all-sky image in Galactic coordinates is plotted using the equal-area Mollweide projection. The plane of the Milky Way Galaxy is horizontal across the middle of each picture. Sagittarius is in the center of the map, Orion is to the right and Cygnus is to the left.The following image just shows the reduced map (i.e., both the dipole and Galactic emission subtracted). The cosmic microwave background fluctuations are extremely faint, only one part in 100,000 compared to the 2.73 degree Kelvin average temperature of the radiation field. The cosmic microwave background radiation is a remnant of the Big Bang and the fluctuations are the imprint of density contrast in the early universe. The density ripples are believed to have given rise to the structures that populate the universe today: clusters of galaxies and vast regions devoid of galaxies."taken from: [1]

6. DMR data with dipole subtracted
Data obtained by COBE at each of the three DMR frequencies , 53, and 90 GHz - following dipole subtraction. (NASA image)

7. WMAP spacecraft in place
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP)
WMAP observes the sky from a Lissajous orbit at the L2 Sun-Earth Lagrangian point, 1.5 million km from Earth.

8. Spacecraft parts
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP)

9. WMAP microwave fluctuation map, with Milky Way Galaxy

10. WMAP microwave fluctuation map, with Milky Way Galaxy subtracted!

11. FIRAS COBE spectrum http://en. wikipedia

12. Void 6-10 billion LY away, 1 billion LY across
In 2004 the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe mapped out a region in the Eridanus Constellation which had cosmic microwave background radiation that was cooler than the surrounding area(Vielva et al & Cruz et al. 2006).
It is centered at the galactic coordinate lII = 207.8°, bII = −56.3° (equatorial: α = 03h15m05s, δ = −19d35m02s). It is in the Northern hemisphere of the Celestial sphere.
voids like this are known in the universe, this void is an unusually large supervoid, perhaps 1000 times larger than expected typical voids. This void is somewhere between 6-10 billion Light-years away and nearly one billion Light-years across. [4] [5] [6]

13. COBE & WMAP conclusions
Universe around 2.73 degrees Kelvin.
13.7 billion ± 200 million years old
TimeSpace curvature of the universe is extremely near to flat not hyperbolic or spherical. with Ω = /- 0.02
The Hubble constant is 70 (km/s)/Mpc, +2.4/-3.2

14. Some of Our Universe, as we understand it now
"Panoramic view of the entire near-infrared sky reveals the distribution of galaxies beyond the Milky Way. The image is derived from the 2MASS Extended Source Catalog (XSC)—more than 1.5 million galaxies, and the Point Source Catalog (PSC)--nearly 0.5 billion Milky Way stars. The galaxies are color coded by 'redshift' obtained from the UGC, CfA, Tully NBGC, LCRS, 2dF, 6dFGS, and SDSS surveys (and from various observations compiled by the NASA Extragalactic Database), or photo-metrically deduced from the K band (2.2 um). Blue are the nearest sources (z < 0.01); green are at moderate distances (0.01 < z < 0.04) and red are the most distant sources that 2MASS resolves (0.04 < z < 0.1). The map is projected with an equal area Aitoff in the Galactic system (Milky Way at center)." [3] Graphic by Thomas Jarret (IPAC)