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We present updated estimates of Galactic foreground emission using seven years of WMAP data. Using the power of differences between multi-frequency template-cleaned maps, we find no evidence for foreground outside of the updated (KQ85y7) foreground mask. We place a 15μK upper bound on rms foreground in the cleaned maps used for cosmological analysis. Further, the cleaning process requires only three -law foregrounds outside of the mask. We find no evidence for polarized foregrounds beyond those from soft (steep-spectrum) synchrotron and thermal dust emission; in particular we find no indication in the polarization data an extra “haze” of hard synchrotron emission from energetic electrons near the Galactic center. We provide an map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) using the internal linear combination method, updated masks, and updates to point source catalogs using two different techniques. With additional years of, we now detect 471 point sources using a five-band technique and 417 sources using a three-band CMB-free. In total there are 62 newly detected point sources, a 12% increase over the five-year release. Also new tests of theMarkov chain Monte Carlo foreground fitting procedure against systematics in the time-stream data, tests against the observed beam asymmetry. Within a few degrees of the Galactic plane, the behavior in total of low-frequency foregrounds is complicated and not completely understood. WMAP data show a rapidly spectrum from 20 to 40 GHz, which may be due to emission from spinning dust grains, steepening, or other effects. Comparisons are made to a 1 deg 408 MHz map (Haslam et al. ) and the 11 deg 2 data (Singal et al. ). We find that spinning dust or steepening synchrotron models fit the combination of and 408 MHz data equally well. ARCADE data appear inconsistent with the steepening synchrotron model consistent with the spinning dust model, though some discrepancies remain regarding the relative strength spinning dust emission. More high-resolution data in the 10–40 GHz range would shed much light on these.
Gold et al. (Tue,) studied this question.