17 research outputs found

    Planck intermediate results XXV : The Andromeda galaxy as seen by Planck

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    The Andromeda galaxy (M 31) is one of a few galaxies that has sufficient angular size on the sky to be resolved by the Planck satellite. Planck has detected M 31 in all of its frequency bands, and has mapped out the dust emission with the High Frequency Instrument, clearly resolving multiple spiral arms and sub-features. We examine the morphology of this long-wavelength dust emission as seen by Planck, including a study of its outermost spiral arms, and investigate the dust heating mechanism across M 31. We find that dust dominating the longer wavelength emission (greater than or similar to 0.3 mm) is heated by the diffuse stellar population (as traced by 3.6 mu m emission), with the dust dominating the shorter wavelength emission heated by a mix of the old stellar population and star-forming regions (as traced by 24 mu m emission). We also fit spectral energy distributions for individual 5' pixels and quantify the dust properties across the galaxy, taking into account these different heating mechanisms, finding that there is a linear decrease in temperature with galactocentric distance for dust heated by the old stellar population, as would be expected, with temperatures ranging from around 22 K in the nucleus to 14 K outside of the 10 kpc ring. Finally, we measure the integrated spectrum of the whole galaxy, which we find to be well-fitted with a global dust temperature of (18.2 +/- 1.0) K with a spectral index of 1.62 +/- 0.11 (assuming a single modified blackbody), and a significant amount of free-free emission at intermediate frequencies of 20-60 GHz, which corresponds to a star formation rate of around 0.12 M-circle dot yr(-1). We find a 2.3 sigma detection of the presence of spinning dust emission, with a 30 GHz amplitude of 0.7 +/- 0.3 Jy, which is in line with expectations from our Galaxy.Peer reviewe

    Planck intermediate results. XXI. Comparison of polarized thermal emission from Galactic dust at 353 GHz with interstellar polarization in the visible

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    The Planck survey provides unprecedented full-sky coverage of the submillimetre polarized emission from Galactic dust. In addition to the information on the direction of the Galactic magnetic field, this also brings new constraints on the properties of dust. The dust grains that emit the radiation seen by Planck in the submillimetre also extinguish and polarize starlight in the visible. Comparison of the polarization of the emission and of the interstellar polarization on selected lines of sight probed by stars provides unique new diagnostics of the emission and light scattering properties of dust, and therefore of the important dust model parameters, composition, size, and shape. Using ancillary catalogues of interstellar polarization and extinction of starlight, we obtain the degree of polarization, p(V), and the optical depth in the V band to the star, tau(V). Toward these stars we measure the submillimetre polarized intensity, P-S, and total intensity, I-S,I- in the Planck 353 GHz channel. We compare the column density measure in the visible, E(B - V), with that inferred from the Planck product map of the submillimetre dust optical depth and compare the polarization direction (position angle) in the visible with that in the submillimetre. For those lines of sight through the di ff use interstellar medium with comparable values of the estimated column density and polarization directions close to orthogonal, we correlate properties in the submillimetre and visible to find two ratios, R-S/V = (P-S/I-S) = (p(V)/tau(V)) and R-P/p = P-S/p(V), the latter focusing directly on the polarization properties of the aligned grain population alone. We find R-S/V = 4.2, with statistical and systematic uncertainties 0.2 and 0.3, respectively, and R-P/p = 5.4 MJy sr(-1), with uncertainties 0.2 and 0.3 MJy sr(-1), respectively. Our estimate of R-S/V is compatible with predictions based on a range of polarizing dust models that have been developed for the di ff use interstellar medium. This estimate provides new empirical validation of many of the common underlying assumptions of the models, but is not yet very discriminating among them. However, our estimate of R-P/p is not compatible with predictions, which are too low by a factor of about 2.5. This more discriminating diagnostic, R-P/p, indicates that changes to the optical properties in the models of the aligned grain population are required. These new diagnostics, together with the spectral dependence in the submillimetre from Planck, will be important for constraining and understanding the full complexity of the grain models, and for interpreting the Planck thermal dust polarization and refinement of the separation of this contamination of the cosmic microwave background.Peer reviewe

    Planck intermediate results. XIX. An overview of the polarized thermal emission from Galactic dust

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    This paper presents an overview of the polarized sky as seen by Planck HFI at 353GHz, which is the most sensitive Planck channel for dust polarization. We construct and analyse maps of dust polarization fraction and polarization angle at 1 degrees resolution, taking into account noise bias and possible systematic effects. The sensitivity of the Planck HFI polarization measurements allows for the first time a mapping of Galactic dust polarized emission on large scales, including low column density regions. We find that the maximum observed dust polarization fraction is high (p(max) = 19.8%), in particular in some regions of moderate hydrogen column density (N-H <2 x 10(21) cm(-2)). The polarization fraction displays a large scatter at NH below a few 10(21) cm(-2). There is a general decrease in the dust polarization fraction with increasing column density above N-H similar or equal to 1 x 10(21) cm(-2) and in particular a sharp drop above N-H similar or equal to 1.5 x 10(22) cm(-2). We characterize the spatial structure of the polarization angle using the angle dispersion function. We find that the polarization angle is ordered over extended areas of several square degrees, separated by filamentary structures of high angle dispersion function. These appear as interfaces where the sky projection of the magnetic field changes abruptly without variations in the column density. The polarization fraction is found to be anti-correlated with the dispersion of polarization angles. These results suggest that, at the resolution of 1 degrees, depolarization is due mainly to fluctuations in the magnetic field orientation along the line of sight, rather than to the loss of grain alignment in shielded regions. We also compare the polarization of thermal dust emission with that of synchrotron measured with Planck, low-frequency radio data, and Faraday rotation measurements toward extragalactic sources. These components bear resemblance along the Galactic plane and in some regions such as the Fan and North Polar Spur regions. The poor match observed in other regions shows, however, that dust, cosmic-ray electrons, and thermal electrons generally sample different parts of the line of sight.Peer reviewe

    Planck 2013 results. XXVI. Background geometry and topology of the Universe

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    Planck 2013 results. III. LFI systematic uncertainties

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    Planck 2013 results. XXIII. Isotropy and statistics of the CMB

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    Planck 2013 results. I. Overview of products and scientific results

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    Planck intermediate results XXVIII. Interstellar gas and dust in the Chamaeleon clouds as seen by Fermi LAT and Planck

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    The nearby Chamaeleon clouds have been observed in gamma rays by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) and in thermal dust emission by Planck and IRAS. Cosmic rays and large dust grains, if smoothly mixed with gas, can jointly serve with the Hi and (CO)-C-12 radio data to (i) map the hydrogen column densities, N-H, in the different gas phases, in particular at the dark neutral medium (DNM) transition between the H I-bright and CO-bright media; (ii) constrain the CO-to-H-2 conversion factor, X-CO; and (iii) probe the dust properties per gas nucleon in each phase and map their spatial variations across the clouds. We have separated clouds at local, intermediate, and Galactic velocities in H i and (1)2CO line emission to model in parallel the gamma-ray intensity recorded between 0.4 and 100 GeV; the dust optical depth at 353 GHz, tau(353); the thermal radiance of the large grains; and an estimate of the dust extinction, A(VQ), empirically corrected for the starlight intensity. The dust and gamma-models have been coupled to account for the DNM gas. The consistent gamma-emissivity spectra recorded in the different phases confirm that the GeV-TeV cosmic rays probed by the LAT uniformly permeate all gas phases up to the (CO)-C-12 cores. The dust and cosmic rays both reveal large amounts of DNM gas, with comparable spatial distributions and twice as much mass as in the CO-bright clouds. We give constraints on the H I-DNM-CO transitions for five separate clouds. CO-dark H-2 dominates the molecular columns up to A(V) similar or equal to 0.9 and its mass often exceeds the one-third of the molecular mass expected by theory. The corrected A(VQ) extinction largely provides the best fit to the total gas traced by the gamma rays. Nevertheless, we find evidence for a marked rise in A(VQ)/N-H with increasing N-H and molecular fraction, and with decreasing dust temperature. The rise in tau(353)/N-H is even steeper. We observe variations of lesser amplitude and orderliness for the specific power of the grains, except for a coherent decline by half in the CO cores. This combined information suggests grain evolution. We provide average values for the dust properties per gas nucleon in the different phases. The gamma rays and dust radiance yield consistent X-CO estimates near 0.7 x 10(20) cm(-2) K-1 km(-1) s. The A(VQ) and tau(353) tracers yield biased values because of the large rise in grain opacity in the CO clouds. These results clarify a recurrent disparity in the gamma-versus dust calibration of X-CO, but they confirm the factor of 2 difference found between the X-CO estimates in nearby clouds and in the neighbouring spiral arms.Peer reviewe

    Planck 2013 results. X. HFI energetic particle effects: characterization, removal, and simulation

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    We describe the detection, interpretation, and removal of the signal resulting from interactions of high energy particles with the Planck High Frequency Instrument (HFI). There are two types of interactions: heating of the 0.1 K bolometer plate; and glitches in each detector time stream. The transientresponses to detector glitch shapes are not simple single-pole exponential decays and fall into three families. The glitch shape for each family has been characterized empirically in flight data and these shapes have been used to remove glitches from the detector time streams. The spectrum of the count rate per unit energy is computed for each family and a correspondence is made to the location on the detector of the particle hit. Most of the detected glitches are from Galactic protons incident on the die frame supporting the micro-machined bolometric detectors. In the Planck orbit at L2, the particle flux is around 5 cm-2 s-1 and is dominated by protons incident on the spacecraft with energy >39 MeV, at a rate of typically one event per second per detector. Different categories of glitches have different signatures in the time stream. Two of the glitch types have a low amplitude component that decays over nearly 1 s. This component produces excess noise if not properly removed from the time-ordered data. We have used a glitch detection and subtraction method based on the joint fit of population templates. The application of this novel glitch subtraction method removes excess noise from the time streams. Using realistic simulations, we find that this method does not introduce signal bias into the Planck data. Reproduced with permission from Astronomy & Astrophysics, © ESO 201

    Planck intermediate results. XVII. Emission of dust in the diffuse interstellar medium from the far-infrared to microwave frequencies

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    Submitted to A&AThe dust-HI correlation is used to characterize the emission properties of dust in the diffuse interstellar medium. We cross-correlate sky maps from Planck, WMAP, and DIRBE, at 17 frequencies from 23 to 3000 GHz, with the Parkes survey of the 21-cm line emission of neutral atomic hydrogen, over a contiguous area of 7500 deg2^2 centred on the southern Galactic pole. Our analysis yields four specific results. (1) The dust temperature is observed to be anti-correlated with the dust emissivity and opacity. We interpret this result as evidence for dust evolution within the diffuse ISM. The mean dust opacity is measured to be (7.1±0.6)10−27cm2/H×(Îœ/353 GHz)1.53±0.03(7.1 \pm 0.6) 10^{-27} cm^2/H \times (\nu/353\, GHz)^{1.53\pm0.03} for 100<Îœ<353100 < \nu <353GHz. (2) We map the spectral index of dust emission at millimetre wavelengths, which is remarkably constant at ÎČmm=1.51±0.13\beta_{mm} = 1.51\pm 0.13. We compare it with the far infrared spectral index beta_FIR derived from greybody fits at higher frequencies, and find a systematic difference, ÎČmm−ÎČFIR=−0.15\beta_{mm}-\beta_{FIR} = -0.15, which suggests that the dust SED flattens at Îœ<353 \nu < 353\,GHz. (3) We present spectral fits of the microwave emission correlated with HI from 23 to 353 GHz, which separate dust and anomalous microwave emission. The flattening of the dust SED can be accounted for with an additional component with a blackbody spectrum, which accounts for (26±6)(26 \pm 6)% of the dust emission at 100 GHz and could represent magnetic dipole emission. Alternatively, it could account for an increasing contribution of carbon dust, or a flattening of the emissivity of amorphous silicates, at millimetre wavelengths. These interpretations make different predictions for the dust polarization SED. (4) We identify a Galactic contribution to the residuals of the dust-HI correlation, which we model with variations of the dust emissivity on angular scales smaller than that of our correlation analysis
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