page_title: Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe
section_title: Nine-year data release
hierarchical_section_title: Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe / Measurements and discoveries / Nine-year data release
caption_attribution_description: English: CMB Images IMAGES &gt; CMB IMAGES &gt; NINE YEAR MICROWAVE SKY http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/media/121238/index.html Nine Year Microwave Sky The detailed, all-sky picture of the infant universe created from nine years of WMAP data. The image reveals 13.77 billion year old temperature fluctuations (shown as color differences) that correspond to the seeds that grew to become the galaxies. The signal from our galaxy was subtracted using the multi-frequency data. This image shows a temperature range of ± 200 microKelvin. Credit: NASA / WMAP Science Team WMAP # 121238 Image Caption 9 year WMAP image of background cosmic radiation (2012)
context_page_description: The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, originally known as the Microwave Anisotropy Probe, was a spacecraft operating from 2001 to 2010 which measured temperature differences across the sky in the cosmic microwave background – the radiant heat remaining from the Big Bang. Headed by Professor Charles L. Bennett of Johns Hopkins University, the mission was developed in a joint partnership between the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Princeton University. The WMAP spacecraft was launched on June 30, 2001 from Florida. The WMAP mission succeeded the COBE space mission and was the second medium-class spacecraft in the NASA Explorers program. In 2003, MAP was renamed WMAP in honor of cosmologist David Todd Wilkinson, who had been a member of the mission's science team. After nine years of operations, WMAP was switched off in 2010, following the launch of the more advanced Planck spacecraft by European Space Agency in 2009.
  WMAP's measurements played a key role in establishing the current Standard Model of Cosmology: the Lambda-CDM model. The WMAP data are very well fit by a universe that is dominated by dark energy in the form of a cosmological constant.
context_section_description: On December 20, 2012, the nine-year WMAP data and related images were released. 13.772±0.059 billion-year-old temperature fluctuations and a temperature range of ± 200 microkelvins are shown in the image. In addition, the study found that 95% of the early universe is composed of dark matter and dark energy, the curvature of space is less than 0.4 percent of "flat" and the universe emerged from the cosmic Dark Ages "about 400 million years" after the Big Bang.
caption: 9-year WMAP image of background cosmic radiation (2012).
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