About Planck Data Release 1

The Planck Data Release 1 (DR1) products are based on the nominal mission which comprises data acquired between August 13 2009 and November 26 2010. Planck is an ESA mission with significant NASA involvement. DR1 is described in the Explanatory Supplement which is available as a PDF file via direct download from the IRSA Planck mission page or via the ESA wiki page.

December 2013: Updates to several DR1 files were released:

• COM_CompMap_CMB-sevem_2048_R1.12.fits: The CMB map from the SEVEM component separation technique has been updated to R1.12
• HFI_CompMap_ThermalDustModel_2048_R1.20.fits: The thermal dust model has been updated to R1.20

In addition, the following new files were added to the archive:

• COM_CompMap_CMB-commrul_0256_R1.00.fits, COM_CompMap_CMB-commrul_2048_R1.00.fits: Commander-Ruler CMB maps at NSIDE values of 256 and 2048 respectively.
• COM_PCCS_SZ-validation_R1.11.fits: FITS binary table file with supplementary information derived from external sources on the 1227 clusters in the PSZ catalog from DR1.
• COM_Mask_CMB-union_2048_R1.10.fits, COM_Mask_Likelihood_2048_R1.10.fits: HEALPix masks used for the CMB power spectrum and likelihood estimates respectively
• An extensive set of simulated sky maps for the foregrounds and the CMB - see Simulation Data in the Explanatory Supplement. These simulations used to test and validate the Planck data analysis pipelines (and, in particular, component separation) makes use of simulations generated with version 1.7.7 of the Planck Sky Model software. The total sky emission is built from the CMB plus ten foreground components, namely thermal dust, spinning dust, synchrotron, CO lines, free-free, thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect (with first order relativistic corrections), kinetic SZ effect, radio and infrared sources, Cosmic Infrared Background (CIB). 100 realizations of the CMB (lensed) and of the noise computed using CAMB: Code of Anisotropies in the Microwave Background are made available.
• An ASCII version of the CMB power spectrum.

August 2013: An update to the EffConv software (v1.1) was released. The new version addresses compilation issues on certain platforms but has identical functionality to v1.0. Also, the actspt likelihoods file was released. The actspt likelihood covers the multipoles 1500 to 10000 for Temperature.

The NASA Planck Archive, which is served by the InfraRed Science Archive (IRSA) at NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), contains the following DR1 products along with supplemental data and tools:

• Planck All Sky Maps - Temperature and Component Separated Maps

Full channel maps are built using all the valid detectors of a frequency channel and cover the nominal mission. Single survey maps are built using all valid detectors of a frequency channel, but cover separately the different sky surveys. Half-ring maps are built using only the first or the second half of the stable pointing period data.

The HEALPix formatted maps are available for download and are used as the basis for cutout images in the catalog visualization service.

• Source Catalogs and Catalog and Map Visualization

Source catalogs are available for download and for query, the latter through IRSA's Catalog Search search. The downloads are packaged as two gzip'ed tar files, one for the single-band based Planck Catalog of Compact Sources [PCCS], the second for the Planck catalogs of Sunyaev-Zeldovich Sources.

The cataloged sources also are available in the visualization service, where the PCCS and SZ catalogs entries are displayed for sources within the selected fields and their positions overlaid on the image cutouts. The maximum recommended size of the cutouts is 2 degrees. Cutouts larger that that will result in photometry that differs by more than 1% compared to photometry on the native HEALPix maps.

Notes on use of the catalogs and cutouts:

Planck observations cover the whole sky, so all-sky catalogs are available for each of the 9 frequency bands (30 - 857 GHz) covered by Planck. These have not been merged into a single multi-wavelength catalog. If you are interested in individual sources, you can search for that source in all of the Planck ER or DR1 catalogs at once. WMAP and IRAS images are also provided for individual sources.

DR1 includes the 9 single-band source catalogs and four catalogs derived from multi-frequency SZ cluster detection algorithms (SZ MMF1, SZ MMF3, SZ PwS), and a union catalog (SZ Union) combining the results from all three. DR1 does not include an updated Cold Cores catalog.

LFI and HFI effective beam files are multi-extension FITS files containing the derived effective beams at the individual frequencies at the HEALPix pixel closest to the input coordinates. These effective beam files come with the downloads in the visualization tool and are based on the nearest HEALPix pixel to the query location.

To measure effective beam-fitted photometric flux densities using the cutouts and effective beams generated from the IRSA visualization tool, one must first center the effective beam to the location of the source peak flux density in the image cutout. This often requires a shift that is a fraction of a pixel. Then, one can measure the source flux density by fitting the *normalized* (i.e., integral unity) effective beam to the source in the cutout. The derived flux density will be in native map units which is T_CMB for 30-353 GHz and MJy/sr for 545 and 857 GHz. T_CMB units can be converted to MJy/sr (see the DR1 Explanatory Supplement for appropriate conversion factors).

• Planck Ancillary Data - Power Spectra, Masks and Instrument Parameters

The four additional data sets available consist of 1) those used to create the all-sky maps and derive cosmological parameters from the CMB, 2) instrumentation information for the LFI and HFI detectors, 3) HEALPix maps containing the number of observation dates and the specific dates across the sky, and 4) conversions between HEALPix pixel numbers and sky coordinates.

• External Datasets - Multiwavelength maps useful for analysis of Planck data

All-sky maps of foreground emission and the WMAP 9 year products are also made available to users of Planck data. In the frequency range covered by Planck (30-857 GHz), Galactic and extra-galactic sources contribute to the observed signal via several mechanisms, most notably free-free (thermal bremsstrahlung) emission, synchrotron radiation, and thermal emission from cold sources. In many regions of the sky signal from foreground sources can dominate over that of the CMB.

• Software and Analysis Products - Useful software and products for analysis of Planck data

The NASA Planck Archive also provides software tools and data sets that will facilitate use of the Planck Data Release 1 products. These tools work with the all-sky HEALPix-formatted maps and with the source catalogs. All-sky map functions include generation of local tangent plane projection for ingestion into tools such as ds9, general aperture photometry directly on the all-sky maps, and convolution of user HEALPix maps with the Planck effective beams. Source spectral energy distribution dependent color-correction calculations and map unit conversions are provided to supplement the analysis of the source catalogs and photometry.

The likelihood code and data can be used to compute the likelihood of a model that predicts the CMB power spectra, lensing power spectrum and foreground and some instrumental parameters. The data files are built from the Planck mission results, as well as some ancillary data from the WMAP9 data release. The data files are in a specific internal format and can only be read by the code. The code consists of a C/F90 library, along with some optional tools in Python. The code can be used to read the data files, and the provided model power spectra and nuisance parameters, to compute the log likelihood of the model.