Related papers: A comprehensive overview of the Cold Spot
An extremely cold and big spot in the WMAP 1-year data is analyzed. Our work is a continuation of a previous paper (Vielva et al. 2004) where non-Gaussianity was detected, with a method based on the Spherical Mexican Hat Wavelet (SMHW)…
The WMAP cold spot was found by applying spherical wavelets to the first year WMAP data. An excess of kurtosis of the wavelet coefficient was observed at angular scales of around 5 degrees. This excess was shown to be inconsistent with…
One of the most interesting explanations for the non-Gaussian Cold Spot (CS) detected in the WMAP data by Vielva et al. 2004, is that it arises from the interaction of the CMB radiation with a cosmic texture (Cruz et al. 2007b). In this…
Recent results of the ESA Planck satellite have confirmed the existence of some anomalies in the statistical distribution of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. One of the most intriguing anomalies is the Cold Spot, firstly…
We reassess the evidence that WMAP temperature maps contain a statistically significant "cold spot" by repeating the analysis using simple circular top-hat (disk) weights, as well as Gaussian weights of varying width. Contrary to previous…
We investigate the local properties of WMAP Cold Spot (CS) by defining the local statistics: mean temperature, variance, skewness and kurtosis. We find that, compared with the \emph{coldest spots} in random Gaussian simulations, WMAP CS…
Cosmologists have suggested a number of intriguing hypotheses for the origin of the "WMAP cold spot", the coldest extended region seen in the CMB sky, including a very large void and a collapsing texture. Either hypothesis predicts a…
The non--Gaussian cold spot in the 1-year WMAP data, described in Vielva et al. and Cruz et al., is analysed in detail in the present paper. First of all, we perform a more rigorous calculation of the significance of the non-zero kurtosis…
In the present work, we study the largest structures of the CMB temperature measured by Planck in terms of the most prominent peaks on the sky, which, in particular, are located in the southern galactic hemisphere. Besides these large-scale…
The first and third year data releases from the WMAP provide evidence of an anomalous Cold Spot (CS) at galactic latitude b=-57deg and longitude l=209deg. We have examined the properties of the CS in some detail in order to assess its…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies are thought to be statistically isotropic and Gaussian. However, several anomalies are observed, including the CMB Cold Spot, an unexpected cold $\sim 10^{\circ}$ region with $p$-value…
We present a careful frequentist analysis of one- and two-point statistics of the hot and cold spots in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data obtained by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). Our main result is the detection…
We detect a dip of 20-45% in the surface brightness and number counts of NVSS sources smoothed to a few degrees at the location of the WMAP cold spot. The dip has structure on scales of approximately 1-10 degrees. Together with independent…
The non-Gaussian cold spot detected in wavelet space in the WMAP 1-year data, is detected again in the coadded WMAP 3-year data at the same position (b = -57, l = 209) and size in the sky (around 10 degrees). The present analysis is based…
A great deal of attention has been given to the so-called Cold Spot in maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature. We present a similar analysis, searching for extremal spots in the CMB lensing convergence and lensing…
Both WMAP and PLANCK missions reported the extremely Cold Spot (CS) centered at Galactic coordinate ($l=209^{\circ}$, $b=-57^{\circ}$) in CMB map. In this paper, we study the local non-Gaussianity of CS by defining the local Minkowski…
Several intriguing phenomena, unlikely within the standard inflationary cosmology, were reported in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data from WMAP and appear to be uncorrelated. Two of these phenomena, termed CMB anomalies, are…
We present an extensive frequentist analysis of the one-point statistics (number, mean, variance, skewness and kurtosis) and two-point correlation functions determined for the local extrema of the cosmic microwave background temperature…
The non-Gaussian Cold Spot (CS) surrounded by its hot ring is one of the most striking features of the CMB. It has been speculated that either new physics or ISW effect induced by the presence of a cosmic void at high redshift can account…
The Cold Spot, with an unusually cold region surrounded by a hot ring, is a statistically significant anomaly in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) sky. In this work we assess whether different sets of multiple subvoids based on the…