The cosmic infrared background
Monday, August 13, 2012 - 06:00
in Astronomy & Space
(Phys.org) -- The cosmic infrared background is the collective infrared radiation emitted by cosmic sources throughout the history of the universe, including sources inaccessible to current telescopes. The latter category, for example, includes the very first generation of stars, currently a subject of intense investigations. Because of the relative uniformity of this background, which is faint and might be interpreted as instrumental noise, fluctuations in it can often be more readily discerned than the actual background level itself. This property also lets astronomers discriminate against the significant foreground contributions from the solar system and our galaxy.