Euclid presents the first fragment of his map of the Universe

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid space mission has unveiled the first piece of its future grand map of the Universe – a huge mosaic of some fourteen million galaxies that represents just 1% of what the telescope aims to reveal in the coming years. .

The 208-megapixel mosaic contains 260 observations of Euclid made by from March 25 to April 8 this year. In just two weeks, the telescope covered 132 square degrees of the southern sky—more than 500 times the area of ​​the full Moon—in exquisite detail.

A fragment of the map was presented at the International Astronautical Congress in Milan (Italy) by the Director General of ESA Joseph Aschbacher, and scientific director, Carol Mandell.

Launched in July 2023, Euclid began regular scientific observations on February 14, 2024. In November 2023 and May 2024, he showed the world his first images excellent quality.

Euclid will spend six years scanning the sky and observing the shapes, distances and movements of billions of galaxies up to 10 billion light-years from Earth. With all this information, Euclid will create the largest 3D space map ever createdwhich will expand our knowledge of the hidden influence of dark matter, the expansion of the Universe and gravity.

“This stunning image is the first part of a map that will show more than a third of the sky in six years. This is only 1% of the map, and yet it is filled with a huge variety of sources that will help scientists discover new ways of describing the Universe,” said Valeria Pettorino, Euclid Project Scientist at ESA.