The Euclid telescope creates the largest map of the Universe. It is approaching 1% and already measures 2 million megapixels.
The European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope has completed the first part of the cosmic mosaic it is creating from the L2 Lagrange point, located a million and a half kilometers from Earth. The 208-gigapixel image represents just 1% of the most detailed 3D map of the universe that Euclid will create in six years.
The first fragment of the map contains millions of stars and galaxies photographed by the Euclid Space Telescope in 260 consecutive observations from March 25 to April 8, 2024. In those two weeks, Euclid managed to cover 132 square degrees of the southern sky, more than 500 times the area of the full Moon visible from Earth.
ESA identified 100 million light sources in the image, including stars in the Milky Way and galaxies beyond ours. 14 million of these galaxies are bright enough for the image to be used in detailed studies of the influence of dark matter and dark energy in the Universe.
An unprecedented window into the vastness of space
Euclid’s main goal is to create largest 3D space map ever createdobserving the shapes, distances and movements of billions of galaxies from our location in space to 10 billion light years away.
With its help, scientists hope to better understand the distribution of dark matter and dark energy, which make up 95% of the Universe and remain largely a mystery.
Dark matter is invisible form of matter which does not emit, absorb or reflect light, but whose existence can be judged by its gravitational effect on visible matter. It holds galaxies together and plays a critical role in the large-scale structure of the Universe. On the other hand, dark energy is the force that causes the expansion of the universe to accelerate, separating cosmic structures that gravity is trying to pull together.
Euclid’s cameras are so sensitive that the mosaic can be magnified up to 600 times the size of the full image, allowing the complex structure of galaxies and their interactions with neighboring galaxies to be seen in detail.
In short, this map of the Universe will allow astronomers to work with detailed statistics about the distribution and evolution of galaxies. They will be able to figure out why some galaxies stopped forming stars over billions of years or how galaxies interact with each other.
As for the blue clouds that appear against the black background of space, these are galactic cirrus clouds, structures of gas and dust that reflect light from the Milky Way and glow in the near-infrared. Its study will also be important for understanding star formation processes in our galaxy.
Euclid European mission built and operated by ESA with the participation of NASA. This project, which is just beginning, involves more than 2,000 scientists from 300 institutions in 15 countries in Europe, the USA, Canada and Japan.
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In Hatak | The first images of Euclid are impressive. New European space telescope is ready to search for dark matter