TUTORIAL

Astronomy OLE
The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
Student Worksheet

Introduction
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation is the light from the era 370,000 years after the Big
Bang, when the Universe was much hotter and denser than today. As well as acting as a direct record of
the early Universe, the CMB photons have been travelling through space towards us for nearly 14 billion
years and so encode information on the entire history of the Universe. The CMB was first discovered in
the 1960s, but it was only with the advent of space-based observatories like COBE, WMAP and Planck
that it became one of our most powerful tools for learning about the Universe.

In this tutorial you will get to grips with our observations of the CMB, using handy online tools to examine
how the CMB sky would look in different universes. You’ll also learn a little about what goes in to making
the spectacular all-sky maps from the WMAP and Planck satellites.

Plan
You should work in groups of three or four for this tutorial. The goal is to answer a series of questions about the
Cosmic Microwave Background radiation using several images and online tools for exploring the latest CMB
observations. Discuss your answers within your group before committing them to paper. You are welcome to use
any web-based resources you like to help you.

Learning Objectives
At the end of this tutorial you should be able to:

• Describe the main features of the microwave background sky and what astrophysical phenomena
give rise to those features.

• Understand how the CMB sky would appear in universes with different cosmological properties
than our own.
• Use the CMB power spectrum to measure the properties of our own Universe.

PART A

Figure 1: The surface of the Earth

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Figure 1 shows a map of the Earth’s surface using a Mollweide projection – the surface, which is the
surface of a sphere, is projected onto two dimensions. This projection aims for accuracy of proportions in
area, but with some loss of accuracy of shapes. The north Pole is at the top centre, the south Pole at the
bottom centre and equator across the centre of the image. Locations such as the centre of Australia and
the middle of the north Atlantic Ocean are on opposite sides of the Earth.

Figure 2: The sky at microwave wavelengths as seen by the COBE satellite

Figure 2 shows the entire night sky as seen at microwave wavelengths by the COBE satellite. This uses
the same Mollweide projection. The north Galactic Pole is at the top centre, the south Galactic Pole at the
bottom centre and the plane of the Galaxy across the centre of the image. The darkest blue and red
colours are opposite each other in the sky.
The colour indicates the frequency of the emission. Blue colours indicate emission that is shifted to higher
frequencies than the average, while red colours indicate emission that is shifted to lower frequencies.
The COBE satellite was launched in 1989 and was the first space-based telescope to map the sky at
microwave wavelengths. It was designed to measure the spectrum and spatial variations of the Cosmic
Microwave Background radiation. In 2006, George Smoot and John Mather, leaders of the project, were
awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discoveries using COBE.
Q1. Describe the main features that you see in this COBE image
Q2. Consider how colour was used in the previous tutorial about Weighing Galaxies. Given that, what
do you think causes the main pattern in this image? Be as precise as you can in your answer.

PART B
Further processing of the COBE images produced the results that made the mission an overwhelming
success and prompted the launch of further space observatories to improve our observations of the CMB.
The most recent of these, launched in 2009, was the Planck mission. Compared to COBE, it had greatly
improved image quality and sensitivity, so we will use Planck images for the rest of this tutorial.
Figure 3 shows the whole sky as seen by the Planck satellite. It is a false-colour image, where maps at
different microwave frequencies are assigned different colours in the visible spectrum then combined to
create a colour image. The different colours therefore represent emission at different frequencies.
The Planckoscope website (http://astrog80.astro.cf.ac.uk/Planck/Planckoscope/index_freq.html) allows
you to see emission at one frequency at a time, or combine all the frequencies using the Composite setting
in the slider (at top right) to see the image in Figure 3 (or part of it).
You can also use the Planckoscope website to display the different sources of the radiation.

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Figure 3: The whole sky as seen by the Planck satellite. The dominant effect seen in Figure 2 has been
subtracted from this image to make the underlying structures more visible.
Go to the Options tab (at lower left) and select Show Components (it will say Show Frequencies if you are
already displaying components). Composite once again shows the sum of all the different components to
see Figure 3 again.
Look at the other component displays to answer the following question.
Q3. The CMB component is the Cosmic Microwave Background map. How does it differ from the other
components? What can you say about the source of all the other components?

PART C
Visit the CMB Simulator website (http://planck.cf.ac.uk/cmb-sim), shown in Figure 4. This allows you to compare
a prediction based on the Big Bang Theory (left) with observations of the real Cosmic Microwave Background
radiation map (right) – a small portion of the image you saw in Part B.

By changing the values on the sliders you can change the properties of the model Universe and hence the CMB
image associated with it. The different Ω parameters represent the different proportions of normal matter, dark
matter and dark energy in the model universe. The sum of these three numbers, Ωtotal = Ωb + Ωc + ΩL gives the
total amount of matter and energy in the universe. Ωtotal = 1 is a universe with a ‘flat’ geometry – the universe in
which we think we live.

Figure 4: A portion of the sky seen in the CMB Simulator, comparing the model selected (left) with the
real universe(right).

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Use this tool to answer the following questions:

Q4. For an extremely light Universe (Ωtotal << 1) how does the typical size of features compare to our Universe?
(this can be achieved with various values of Ωb , Ωc and ΩL provided Ωtotal << 1 )
Q5. For an extremely heavy Universe (Ωtotal >> 1) how does the typical size of features compare to our
Universe?
Q6. Consider a “just right” Universe with Ωtotal = 1. What is wrong with a Universe with large amounts of normal
matter only? What about a Universe with almost no normal matter?

PART D

The CMB Simulator website also displays the CMB power spectrum if you select the symbol in the top
right corner of the page. You also need to click settings (the symbol) and ensure that "normalise scale"
is ticked.

The power spectrum is a 1-dimensional representation of the 2-dimensional CMB map. You will meet the
power spectrum in more detail on the Canvas pages, but essentially it tells you the size and prominence
of structures within the 2-dimensional map (i.e. “how big and how dark are the patches in the maps”).

An image of the power spectrum from the canvas pages is shown below.

Given that Ωtotal = 1, use the CMB Simulator website to answer the following questions:
Q7. What are the correct fractions of normal matter, dark matter and dark energy that best match the
observed CMB power spectrum?
Q8. In a universe where dark matter and normal matter are in roughly the same proportion as our own
Universe (roughly 5:1), but with zero dark energy, how would the power spectrum change?
Q9. In a universe with the same amount of dark energy as our own Universe, but with the proportion of
dark matter and normal matter swapped (i.e. 5 times more normal matter than dark matter), how
would the power spectrum change? Speculate on how else this universe might differ from our own.