Euclid Telescope Reveals Groundbreaking Images and Data – Sky and Telescope

The European Space Agency (ESA) Euclid space mission just launched your first scientific dataalong with another impressive set of five images revealing wide, deep and detailed views of stellar nurseries and galaxies near and far. These materials are part of Euclid's early published Observations, spanning 513 scientific pages and 10 images (the first five of which were launched in 2023).

This cosmic treasure is the result of only 24 hours of observation, showing the advantages of Euclid: speed and range. The space telescope has created these expansive cosmic portraits in just one hour of observation.

Euclid carries two instruments: the visible instrument (VIS) and the near-infrared spectrometer and photometer (NISP). VIS is a 609-megapixel visible-band imager, sensitive to low light levels and capable of imaging 0.5 square degrees at a time, equivalent to the area of ​​2.5 full moons as seen from Earth. Similarly, NISP has the widest field of view of any infrared instrument ever lifted into space, at 0.57 square degrees per exposure.

Together, the two instruments produce wide, deep, high-resolution images hundreds of times faster than other telescopes. These snapshots are at least four times sharper than any of their ground-based Euclid counterparts, and hundreds of times larger than comparable other space telescopes.

The published images show Euclid's prodigious field of view and sharp resolution. The mission will use them to capture cosmic evolution in 3D, from 10 billion years ago to the present, investigating the distribution and functioning of dark matter, as well as the influence of dark energy in accelerating the expansion of our planet. universe.

Five new images of Euclid

In the first image, Euclid's infrared eyes pierce the dense dust and gas of the Messiest 78 nebula, 1,300 light-years away in Orion, to reveal hot young stars enveloped by gas and entwined by darker filaments of interstellar dust.

By looking through the shroud for the first time, “Euclid has discovered half a million objects, including galaxies and stars,” explains Maruša Žerjal, member of the scientific team (Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, Spain).

Surprisingly, astronomers can use Euclid to study much smaller objects in such wide images, including brown dwarfs and planets only a few times more massive than Jupiter. A complete census of these objects will reveal some of the mass hidden in the universe's population of small bodies, adds Jerry Zhang (also at the institute). The team also plans to measure the ratio between stars and substellar objects over cosmic time.

This image of the spectacular spiral NGC 6744, 30 million light years away in the southern constellation of Pavo, NGC 6744 captures an “archetype of the type of galaxy that currently forms most of the stars in the local Universe,” according to a study. ESA press release. The image shows the galaxy's spiral arms, as well as finer features such as the feathered dust lanes between the arms. Euclid's millimeter precision even allows astronomers to “count individual stars and reveal the distribution of dust,” says researcher Francesca Annibali (INAF-OAS, Italy).

Astronomers will use Euclid to create comprehensive maps of diverse stellar populations, including newborn stars, old star clusters, and the dusty distribution of future stars, relating their formation to the physics of spiral structures.

The Golden Group of galaxies, located 62 million light-years away in the constellation Dorado, shows “the evolution of galaxies as it is happening,” says Karina Voggel (Strasbourg Observatory, France).

Some of its members are merging or showing signs of recent mergers. As an intermediary between immense galaxy clusters and smaller galaxy groups, the Golden Group is a valuable snapshot of medium-scale structure and galactic collisions.

Clusters of many thousands of stars appear around the Golden Group. Teymoor Saifollahi (Strasbourg Observatory, France) points out that these globular clusters are part of the Golden Group, since both the clusters and the group were born together approximately 10 billion years ago.

One of the main scientific goals of the Euclid mission is to search for dark matter, and Abell 2674, a billion light years away in Pisces, offers a main goal. This galaxy cluster, top right, is a gravitationally bound package of hundreds of galaxies “orbiting a halo of dark matter,” according to Hakim Atek (Paris Institute of Astrophysics).

Such dense regions of space are perfect places to explore the effects of dark matter. Atek describes these “blank fields” as “more representative of the large-scale distribution of galaxies in the universe.”

This single targeting, which already contains 250,000 galaxies and other celestial objects, is one of the first of many: Euclid will map an area 30,000 times larger than this image, or about a third of the sky.

The downward shining star (V*BP-Phoenicis/HD 1973) is located within our Milky Way and demonstrates Euclid's design, which minimizes light scattering. “This is precisely what defines Euclid's keen vision of the universe,” says Atek.

The galaxy cluster Abell 2390, 2.7 billion light years away in Pegasus, is an immense agglomeration of galaxies like our Milky Way. It is accompanied by an impressive panorama of 50,000 galaxies. And thanks to Euclid, scientists can now measure their distances and shapes.

Galaxy clusters can contain “the mass of 10 trillion suns,” explains Jason Rhodes (NASA JPL), and much of that mass may be in the form of dark matter. The gravity of these clusters warps the path of background photons in a phenomenon known as gravitational loans. This effect can be seen in the curved arcs of the image, some of which show multiple images of the celestial objects behind them.

Astronomers can also use this image to study intracluster light Cast by orphan stars. Intergalactic interactions have driven these stars from their galactic homes to wander alone through intergalactic space.

This quintet of status quo changes is just the beginning, as Euclid only began its six-year scientific study in February. He will observe more than a third of the sky and see billions of galaxies 10 billion light years away, creating a monumental three-dimensional map through space and time.

The only drawback? The next data release is scheduled for March 2025. But since Euclid inspires imagination and innovation, who knows what enlightening discoveries will be made in the meantime.