Experiments

• AG - astrophysics and geophysics
• BK - biophysics and complex systems
• FM - solid state physics and physics of materials
• KT - nuclear physics and particle physics

AG - astrophysics and geophysics

• AG.CCD - Astronomical CCD Calibrations and Observations
• AG.DEN - The Curious Case of Dark Energy
• AG.DMH - Numerical Analysis and Data Visualisation for Dark Matter Halos
• AG.GMC - Gravity-Media Correspondence
• AG.MWH - The Microwave Sky
• AG.RBK - Rayleigh-Bénard Convection
• AG.VOB - Virtual Observatory

AG.MWH - The Microwave Sky

The "Concordance Cosmological Model" and thus our modern vision of the fundamental physics behind most of the Universe - primordial inflation, dark matter and dark energy - is based essentially on the interpretation of the cosmic microwave-background. However, in order to get to the cosmological part of the background, the galactic foreground emission from dust and hot gas must first be subtracted. In this experiment, the original full-sky data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) are used and evaluated: the physical identification, interpretation and deduction of the foreground sources, masking of galactic residual sources, representation of the residuals in spherical harmonic functions, calculation and interpretation of the acoustic power spectra. The participants perform these tasks in the form of small and simple PYTHON programs, thereby giving a brief introduction to this programming language to those who have no previous experience.