The Euclid space telescope, from the European Space Agency (ESA), released this Tuesday (15), the first part of an ambitious map of the Universe. The news was announced at the International Astronautical Congress, in Milan, Italy. The image shows millions of stars and galaxies in incredible resolution.
This first piece of the cosmic map is a gigantic 208 gigapixel mosaic, the result of 260 observations made between March 25 and April 8, 2024. In two weeks, Euclid covered an area of 132 square degrees of the sky Southern Hemisphere – an area 500 times the area of the full moon.
The revealed mosaic represents just 1% of the total that the telescope will map over six years. When the mission is complete, Euclid will have created the largest three-dimensional map of the Universe, tracking the shape, distance and movement of billions of galaxies, some 10 billion light years away.
This first part of the map is already impressive: there are 100 million sources, including stars in the Milky Way and distant galaxies. Of these, around 14 million galaxies could be used to study the effects of dark matter and dark energy – two great mysteries in science.
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“The image is amazing and it marks the beginning of a journey that will reveal, in six years, more than a third of the sky. And that is only 1% of the map”, points out Valeria Pettorino, project scientist Euclid at ESA. According to her, the telescope will allow scientists to find new ways to understand the Universe.
What do you see in the pictures that Euclides took?
With highly sensitive cameras, Euclides was able to capture objects with great detail. By expanding the image up to 600 times, it is possible to see, for example, the complex structure of a spiral galaxy.
As well as stars and galaxies, the mosaic shows clouds of gas and dust, known as “galactic cirrus”, which reflect light from the Milky Way and glow in sub-illumination. red, captured by ESA’s Planck satellite.
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This first picture is just a preview of what’s to come. As of February 2024, when the mission began its regular scientific observations, 12% of the survey has already been completed. The next data release, scheduled for March 2025, will include deep areas of the sky mapped by Euclid. The first complete cosmological data from the mission will be released in 2026.
About the Euclid Telescope
Euclides was launched in July 2023, and is the result of an international collaboration involving more than 2,000 scientists from 300 institutions in 15 countries, as well as partners such as NASA, the space agency United States. The mission promises to provide unprecedented data on the structure of the cosmos and the role of dark energy and matter in the evolution of the Universe.
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Check out the video released by the European Space Agency with images of Euclides:
2024-10-19 21:43:00
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