Abstract The Cosmic Background Explorer, launched November 18, 1989, has nearly completed its first full mapping of the sky with all three of its instruments: a Far Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS) covering 0.1 to 10 mm, a set of Differential muwave Radiometers (DMR) operating at 3.3, 5.7, and 9.6 mm, and a Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE) spanning 1 to 300 μm in ten bands. A preliminary map of the sky derived from DIRBE data is presented. Initial cosmological implications include: a limit on the Comptonization y parameter of 10−3, on the chemical potential μ parameter of 10−2, a strong limit on the existence of a hot smooth intergalactic medium, and a confirmation that the dipole anisotropy has the spectrum expected from a Doppler shift of a blackbody. There are no significant anisotropies in the muwave sky detected, other than from our own galaxy and a cos θ dipole anisotropy whose amplitude and direction agree with previous data. At shorter wavelengths, the sky spectrum and anisotropies
Early results from the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE)
Advances in Space Research ; 11 , 2 ; 181-191
1991-01-01
11 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Early results from the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE)
NTRS | 1991
|Cosmology and the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE)
AIAA | 1989
|NTRS | 1991
|