The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
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Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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This image uses data from the Second Planck Catalogue of Compact Sources to map polarised compact sources across the sky. The catalogue includes data from the full Planck mission, surveying the entire sky in nine different wavelengths spanning the far-infrared to radio, covering the spectral range 30 GHz to 857 GHz. Of these nine frequencies, Planck has polarisation sensitive instruments in seven, and this image shows maps sources found using the 30 GHz frequency channel. The full catalogue offers polarisation data for several hundred compact sources.
The most prominent polarised compact sources have been labelled and can clearly be seen in this image. One such object, to the right of centre in the image, is Centaurus A. A diagram comparing this object at different Planck frequencies is also available.