The first stars and large-scale structure in our universe formed much later than previously thought, according to the latest maps and data from the European Space Agency’s Planck telescope, which has ...

New data from the Planck satellite suggests very good news for proponents of the standard Big Bang cosmological model of the universe. By standard I mean what cosmologists now label as the ΛCDM or ...

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, a remnant of the Big Bang, provides a snapshot of the universe at approximately 380,000 years old, when it became transparent to light. Three satellite ...

Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing a special feature of 31 articles describing the data gathered by Planck over 15 months of observations and released by ESA and the Planck Collaboration in March ...

ESA's Planck mission is yielding some surprising findings along with a beautiful new map of the Milky Way that breaks down some of the key elements of our galaxy. The telescope spent four years ...

Despite earlier reports of a possible detection, a joint analysis of data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Planck satellite and the ground-based BICEP2 and Keck Array experiments has found no ...

The Planck mission has produced a map of the cosmic microwave background at higher resolution than ever before. Peter Coles explains its implications for our understanding of the universe The most ...

This artist's view shows the combined focal plane of the two instruments on board ESA's Planck spacecraft. The High Frequency Instrument (HFI) is visible as a circular forest of horns at the centre, ...

Half a century ago, astronomers got their first look at the infant universe: a haze of soft light that suffused the entire sky. This cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation seemed to indicate that ...