The Implications of Interstellar Dust for the Cosmic Microwave Background
Abstract
A detailed comparison of the full range of PLANCK and WMAP data for small (2 deg by 2 deg) areas of sky and the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) ILC maps reveals that the structure of foreground dust may be more complex than previously thought. If 857 and 353 GHz emission is dominated by galactic dust at a distance < few hundred light years, then it should not resemble the cosmological ILC structure originating at a distance ~13 billion light years. In some areas of sky, however, we find strong morphological correlations, forcing us to consider the possibility that the foreground subtraction is not complete. Our data also show that there is no single answer for the question, “To what extent does dust contaminate the cosmologically important 143 GHz data?” In some directions, the contamination appears to be quite strong, but in others, it is less of an issue. This complexity needs to be taken in account in order to derive an accurate foreground mask in the quest to understand the CMB small-scale structure. We hope that a continued investigation of these data will lead to a definitive answer to the question above and, possibly, to new scientific insights on interstellar matter, the CMB, or both.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #231
- Pub Date:
- January 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AAS...23111606S