Astronomy Picture of the Day
    


A Year of Resolving Backgrounds
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A Year of Resolving Backgrounds
Credit & Copyright: The MAXIMA Collaboration, NSF
Explanation: No matter which direction you look, no matter what type of light you see, the sky glows - but why? The sources of many of these background radiations have remained long-standing puzzles, but this millennial year brought some partial resolutions. In X-ray light the recently launched spacecraft Chandra and XMM resolved much of the seemingly uniform X-ray background into many discrete sources, many of which appear to be black holes at the centers of galaxies accreting matter. In microwave light, the BOOMERANG and MAXIMA-1 missions resolved with new clarity the seemingly uniform microwave background. The size and distribution of these spots indicates a geometrically flat universe, which, when combined recent supernovae results, indicate a universe with an accelerating expansion rate filled with dark matter and dark energy. Pictured above, a map spanning ten degrees of the microwave sky resolves the microwave background into hot and cold spots, as indicated in microkelvins.

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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (USRA)
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NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.

Based on Astronomy Picture Of the Day

Publications with keywords: cosmic microwave background radiation
Publications with words: cosmic microwave background radiation
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