1. The best popular introduction to cosmology is in: W Weinberg, The First Three Minutes, 2nd edition, Basic Books, 1988&1993.
2. These books present a more recent view: J C Mather and J Boslough, The Very First Light, Basic Books, 1996. G Smoot and K Davidson, Wrinkles in Time, Little, Brown and Company, London, 1993.
3. The following URL has the details of COBE project at the NASA web site: http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/cobe/
4. A technical review of several aspects of cosmology is available in the special edition of Current Science and further references are available in the review articles in that volume: Current Science, Vol. 88, 2005.