A new image of cosmic microwave background radiation (half-sky image at left, closeup at right) adds high definition from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope to an earlier image from the Planck satellite.

The cosmic microwave background, shown at left in this illustration, is a flash of light that occurred when the young universe cooled enough for electrons and protons to form the first atoms.

A never-before-seen image of the cosmic microwave background, combining data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and the Planck satellite, offers a high-definition view of the early Universe.

ESA and the Planck Collaboration This image unveiled March 21, 2013, shows the cosmic microwave background (CMB) as observed by the European Space Agency's Planck space observatory.

Astrophysicists are poring over new data from Europe’s Planck cosmic background explorer for clues to the period in the early universe known as inflation, when the Big Bang theoretically was ...

Using antennae, scientists first identified the cosmic microwave background in the 1960s. Since then physicists have built more and more sophisticated instruments to capture increasingly better images ...

The image shows the cosmic microwave background radiation visible 380,000 years after the Big Bang. ACT Collaboration; ESA/Planck Collaboration "Before, we got to see where things were, and now we ...

New research by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) collaboration has produced the clearest images yet of the universe's infancy—the earliest cosmic time yet accessible to humans. Measuring ...

Known simply as “The Horn Antenna” since it was built by Bell Labs in 1959 atop a hill in Holmdel, New Jersey, the antenna was originally designed to study long-distance microwave communications.

Scientists are using secondary signatures from the cosmic microwave background to map the universe’s hidden matter.

“Our measurement is in better agreement with that from the cosmic microwave background [CMB],” essentially the big bang’s remnant heat from when the universe was scarcely more than a 400,000 ...

A never-before-seen image of the cosmic microwave background, combining data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and the Planck satellite, offers a high-definition view of the early Universe.