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AKARI operation completed

At 17:23 (JST) on 2011-11-24, operation of the infrared astronomical satellite AKARI (ASTRO-F) was completed. Since its launch on 2006-02-22, the mission has provided many essential scientific results including infrared source catalogues containing 1.3 million objects.

This figure shows one of the recent AKARI results, a sky fluctuation in the 2.4 micrometer band toward the North Ecliptic Pole. This data cannot be explained by any distribution of known objects but suggest that the origin of the fluctuation is attributed to the first stars of the universe. The diameter of the image is 10 arc minutes, which corresponds to one million light years assuming the first star origin. The credit of the image is JAXA and Seoul National University. More detailed results can be found in Matsumoto et al. (2011), "AKARI OBSERVATION OF THE FLUCTUATION OF THE NEAR-INFRARED BACKGROUND".

Furthermore, many discoveries will be made from AKARI archival data, even after the operation is finished. To make this happen, we are planning to release various AKARI data products (including diffuse maps) and provide DARTS services. Please keep checking our AKARI page for your discovery.

Takayuki Tamura (ISAS/JAXA) Jan. 2012