Last year, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Euclid telescope with the goal of surveying a significant portion of the sky to shed light on the enigmatic nature of dark matter. After navigating through some initial icy obstacles, the ESA has unveiled the first glimpse of the expansive cosmic catalog that Euclid is creating.
Constructed from 260 observations made over a span of just two weeks in March and April of this year, the first segment of the cosmic map is a massive mosaic featuring 208 gigapixels. A zoomed-in view of various sections reveals intricate details of the Southern Sky, showcasing 14 million distant galaxies and tens of millions of stars within our own Milky Way.
“This captivating image represents the initial part of a map that will ultimately illustrate more than a third of the sky within six years. Although this is only 1% of the entire map, it’s teeming with diverse sources that will assist scientists in formulating new models to understand the Universe,” stated Valeria Pettorino, the Project Scientist for Euclid at ESA.
In addition to the captivating images, ESA has highlighted several particularly striking views from the mosaic, with zoom levels ranging from 12 to 150 times compared to the complete dataset. These images feature stunning spiral galaxies, vast clusters of galaxies, and faint, small dwarf galaxies.
“We’ve already witnessed breathtaking, high-resolution observations of individual celestial objects and groups from Euclid. This latest image offers an initial glimpse into the vast expanses of the sky that Euclid will examine, enabling detailed analyses of billions of galaxies,” said Jason Rhodes from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Looking ahead, the next phase of this extensive cosmic mapping effort will see a release scheduled for March 2025. This reveal will include extraordinarily detailed images from specific areas of interest known as the Euclid Deep Fields. Currently, the mission has completed about 12% of its large-scale survey, which means there are many more awe-inspiring discoveries awaiting us from this remarkable telescope.
“What truly amazes me about these new images is the vast range of physical scales they capture,” commented Mike Seiffert from JPL. “These images encompass details from clusters of stars adjacent to individual galaxies all the way to some of the universe’s largest structures. We’re starting to glimpse the early signs of what the complete data from Euclid will reveal once the primary survey is finished.”