The haze map is orthogonal (by construction) to the other foreground templates (Haslam soft synchrotron, H-alpha for free-free, FIR dust emission) and therefore contains negative and positive regions. If the haze is indeed free-free, then the total free-free emission is the H-alpha based map plus the haze. Four maps are available:

• wmap_k_ffhalpha_yr1.fits - the halpha free-free map at K-band
• wmap_k_ffhaze_yr1.fits - the haze at K-band
• wmap_k_fftotal_yr1.fits - the sum of the above
• wmap_ffmask.fits - mask (1=good)

Copies of the haze maps exist in two formats:

table -- binary FITS tables in the WMAP format

simple -- simple FITS files

In all cases, files are HEALPix projections (Nside=512, ring order).

Speculation that the haze is synchrotron emission from cosmic-ray particles produced by dark matter annihilation:
"WMAP Microwave Emission Interpreted as Dark Matter Annihilation in the Inner Galaxy" D. P. Finkbeiner 2005, astro-ph/0409027

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