JAKARTA – After arriving at the orbit of its destination Lagrange Sun-Earth 2 (L2), the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid Telescope showed off its first experimental images.
Using two telescope instruments, namely the VISible instrument (VIS) and Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP), stunning images show Euclid will achieve the scientific goals he was designed for and perhaps more.
While there are still months before the Euclid Telescope provides a true new view of the cosmos, with this image, the scientists behind the mission are confident the telescope and instruments are working properly.
“After more than 11 years of designing and developing Euclid, it is very exciting and very emotional to see these first drawings,” said Euclid project manager Giuseppe Racca, in a statement quoted from the ESA website, Tuesday, August 1.
“Even more remarkable when we think that we only see a few galaxies here, produced with minimum system tuning. A fully calibrated Euclid will eventually observe billions of galaxies to create the largest 3D sky map ever.”
In that first image, some of the galaxies are easily identifiable, and some hazy blobs can also be seen hidden among the stars, waiting to be revealed by the Euclid Telescope in the future.
Although the image is full of detail, the actual area of the sky it covers is only about a quarter of the width and height of the full Moon.
However, according to Euclid’s team the images are even more special, considering they were frightened when they first turned on the instrument.
Euclid’s team once captured unexpected light patterns that contaminate images. Later, further investigations were carried out and showed that there was sunlight creeping into the telescope, perhaps through a small opening.
That light, it turns out, is only detected in certain orientations. For information, VIS will take super-sharp images of billions of galaxies to measure their shape.
Meanwhile, NISP has a dual role for imaging galaxies in infrared light and measuring the amount of light emitted by galaxies at various wavelengths.
The role of these two instruments allows scientists to know firsthand how far each galaxy is.
By combining distance information with the shape of galaxies as measured by VIS, scientists can chart how galaxies are distributed across the Universe, and how this distribution changes over time.
Ultimately, those 3D maps will teach us about dark matter and dark energy. Over the next several months, ESA and industry partners will continue to perform all necessary tests and checks to ensure the Euclid Telescope is performing at its best.
At the end of the phase commissioning and verification of that performance, the real science will begin. At that time, ESA will release a new set of images to demonstrate the mission capabilities of the Euclid Telescope.
Tags: space telescope
2023-08-01 14:30:00
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