High resolution foreground cleaned CMB map from WMAP

We perform an independent foreground analysis of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) maps to produce a cleaned cosmic microwave background (CMB) map (available online) useful for cross-correlation with, e.g., galaxy and x-ray maps. We use a variant of the Tegmark-Efstathiou technique that assumes that the CMB has a blackbody spectrum, but is otherwise completely blind, making no assumptions about the CMB power spectrum, the foregrounds, WMAP detector noise or external templates. Compared with the foreground-cleaned internal linear combination map produced by the WMAP team, our map has the advantage of containing less non-CMB power (from foregrounds and detector noise) outside the Galactic plane. The difference is most important on the angular scale of the first acoustic peak and below, since our cleaned map is at the highest (12.6^') rather than lowest (49.2^') WMAP resolution. We also produce a Wiener filtered CMB map, representing our best guess as to what the CMB sky actually looks like, as well as CMB-free maps at the five WMAP frequencies useful for foreground studies. We argue that our CMB map is clean enough that the lowest multipoles can be measured without any galaxy cut, and obtain a quadrupole value that is slightly less low than that from the cut-sky WMAP team analysis. This can be understood from a map of the CMB quadrupole, which shows much of its power falling within the Galaxy cut region, seemingly coincidentally. Intriguingly, both the quadrupole and the octopole are seen to have power suppressed along a particular spatial axis, which lines up between the two, roughly towards (l,b)∼(-110°,60°) in Virgo.