WMAP CMB Map

This is the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) sky map of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The CMB is the flash of light from the Big Bang itself. This image is a baby photo of the Universe at ~400,000 years old. This image, and the data used to generate it, is proof that: (1) There was a Big Bang – the entire universe started from a small, dense, hot ball of gas. (2) The universe is expanding at a rate of 71 km/sec/Mpc. (3) The Universe is 12 – 14 billion years old. (4) Tiny, random, fluctuations in the Big Bang generated all large-scale structure (galaxies & bigger) in the Universe. It just doesn't get any more profound than that.

The two things you need to know about this map is that the spectrun fits a perfect Planck curve to better than one part in one thousand, the mean temperature from that spectrum is 2.725 K, and the fluctuations shown in the map are from +200 to -200 micro-K.

WMAP CMB temperature map (770k JPEG):
http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/map/map_images/pub_images/ILC_Maps/ILC_b.jpg

References: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni.html, http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html