R.V. Correa, T. Villela, C.A. Wuensche, A.J. Preto, H.F. de Campos Velho, S. Stephnany (2006): An Innovative Approach for Making Cosmic Microwave Background Maps, Computer Physics Communications (submitted).

Abstract: The making of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) maps consists in reducing a large time-ordered data set of temperatures acquired by a telescope into a map of sky temperature anisotropies. The CMB map is discretized in pixels according to the resolution of the telescope and is constructed from a set of estimated sky temperatures derived from the acquired temperatures. CMB maps allow further analysis in order to estimate cosmological parameters. The standard method for making CMB maps was developed by the COBE satellite team. It is based on the least squares approach, and leads to a system of linear equations derived from a vector of acquired temperatures and a pointing matrix determined by the telescope scanning strategy. A commonly used approach for reducing the computational complexity of CMB map making is the bin average method, that consists in averaging the temperatures successively acquired for each pixel. This work proposes an innovative approach.