United space in Europe
Milky Way's magnetic fingerprint
Science & Exploration

Milky Way's magnetic fingerprint

06/05/2014 11804 views 52 likes 310474 ID
  • HI-RES JPG [649.50 kB]
  • HI-RES TIF [947.25 kB]

Thank you for liking

You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!

The magnetic field of our Milky Way Galaxy as seen by ESA’s Planck satellite. This image was compiled from the first all-sky observations of polarised light emitted by interstellar dust in the Milky Way. The magnetic field is displayed using a visualisation technique called line integral convolution (LIC).

Darker regions correspond to stronger polarised emission, and the striations indicate the direction of the magnetic field projected on the plane of the sky. The dark band running horizontally across the centre corresponds to the Galactic Plane. Here, the polarisation reveals a regular pattern on large angular scales, which is due to the magnetic field lines being predominantly parallel to the plane of the Milky Way. The data also reveal variations of the polarisation direction within nearby clouds of gas and dust. This can be seen in the tangled features above and below the plane, where the local magnetic field is particularly disorganised.

The image is a Mollweide projection of the full celestial sphere, with the plane of the Galaxy aligned with the horizontal axis of the oval. Certain areas in the image, mostly at high Galactic latitude, have been masked out. The overall intensity in these regions is low, complicating the separation of foreground and cosmic microwave background (CMB) components. Further data analysis will improve this by the time of the full data release in late 2014.

Full story: Planck takes magnetic fingerprint of our Galaxy

  • ESA and the Planck Collaboration
  • Space Science
  • Planck
Science & Exploration

The magnetic field along the Galactic plane

Image 57665 views 218 likes
Polarised emission from Milky Way dust
Science & Exploration

Polarised emission from Milky Way dust

Image 9330 views 48 likes
Star formation and magnetic turbulence in the Orion Molecular Cloud
Science & Exploration

Star formation and magnetic turbulence in the Orion…

Image 11578 views 113 likes
Our galaxy’s heart
Science & Exploration

Our galaxy’s heart

Image 10241 views 183 likes
Science & Exploration

Planck’s flame-filled view of the Polaris Flare

Image 7026 views 116 likes