Planck preparing for launch

The Planck Surveyor, the European Space Agency’s satellite-borne microwave background telescope, is preparing for launch on April 16.  Andrew Jaffe has some pictures of the preparations.

Planck will map the microwave background with finer resolution than NASA’s WMAP satellite.  It’ll also cover a considerably broader range of frequencies.  This is helpful in separating the microwave background from other, more local sources of radiation.

I think I’m still officially a member of the Planck team in some sense, although I haven’t done any real work on it.

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Ted Bunn

I am chair of the physics department at the University of Richmond. In addition to teaching a variety of undergraduate physics courses, I work on a variety of research projects in cosmology, the study of the origin, structure, and evolution of the Universe. University of Richmond undergraduates are involved in all aspects of this research. If you want to know more about my research, ask me!