by The European Space Agency (ESA) will release five new images from the Euclid space telescope on Thursday (May 23). And, anyway, if the previous set of pictures is anything to go by – space fans should be in for a total treat.
“Five new portraits of our cosmos were captured during Euclid’s early observing phase, each revealing exciting new science,” ESA officials said in a statement. “You won’t want to miss Euclid’s ability to solve the mysteries of the cosmos.”
The new images will be revealed at 05:00 EDT (12:00 CEST) and will be accompanied by 10 incredible scientific papers. You can watch the data release live on the ESA YouTube channel.
Related: Euclid’s telescope de-ices a ‘dark universe’ from a million miles away
As an appetizer for the event, perhaps we can remind ourselves of the incredible cosmic images delivered so far this mission.
Euclid’s story so far
Launched on July 1, 2023 from Cape Canaveral in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Euclid is a wide-angle space telescope carrying a 600-megapixel camera that views the cosmos in visible light, a near-infrared spectrometer and A photometer is used to determine the migration of galaxies. Knowing the redshift shift allows scientists to determine how fast distant galaxies are moving away from our planet.
Euclid’s main mission is to investigate the two most mysterious aspects of the universe: dark energy and dark matter. These phenomena together make up what is often called the “dark universe.”
Dark energy is the placeholder name given to whatever force accelerates the expansion of the universe. Dark matter, on the other hand, is a type of matter that is effectively invisible because it does not interact with light. This means that scientists know that it is not “normal” matter made of electrons, protons and neutrons that make up the stars, planets, moons and our bodies. Dark matter can only make its presence known through its interactions with gravity, which can affect ordinary matter and light. To be clear, however, an object does not necessarily become dark matter or dark energy. Both can be made of many things – or, perhaps they are indeed made of one homogeneous thing.
The point is, we simply don’t know.
However, dark energy is estimated to account for about 68% of the universe’s energy and matter budget, with dark matter comprising about 27%. That means the dark matter makes up 95% of the stuff in the universe and the stuff we actually understand makes up about 5%.
So, known as a “dark universe detective” because of his distinctive packet of instruments, Euclid clearly has his work cut out for him. But certainly, the first official images from the space telescope released on November 7, 2023, after its first four months in space, showed that it is up to the task.
Directly above is one of the first images seen by the public from the Euclid telescope. It’s a picture showing 1,000 or so galaxies, all belonging to the Perseus Cluster. Located approximately 240 million light-years away from Earth, this cluster is one of the largest structures in the known universe.
Mapping galaxies in such large volumes is crucial to understanding how dark matter is distributed and how this distribution has affected the evolution of the universe.
Beyond the abundance of galaxies in the Perseus Cluster, the image revealed another 100,000 galaxies much further away, each containing up to hundreds of billions of stars. Observing distant galaxies in large numbers like this is essential to solving Euclid as dark energy is pushing these galaxies away faster and faster by accelerating the expansion of the space between them.
That is not to say that Euclid has his eyes on a wide range of galaxies that he cannot affect images of individual galaxies.
Another of Euclid’s first images that we pay particular attention to was an instrument whose task it was to reveal the dark aspects of the universe. That’s because he identified the galaxy IC 342, known as the “Hidden Galaxy.”
This galaxy is located about 11 million light years from Earth and is difficult to imagine because it lies behind the bright, dusty disk of the Milky Way. However, that did not stop Euclid from capturing an incredible image of this hidden spiral galaxy. To do this, the space telescope used its near-infrared instrument, which is advantageous because the gas and dust of the Milky Way’s disk are less effective at absorbing infrared light compared to other wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation.
To unravel the mysteries of the dark universe and create a detailed 3D map of the cosmos, Euclid will need to see galaxies as far away as 10 billion light years away by viewing the 13.8 billion year old universe which was less than 4 years. billion years after the Big Bang.
These galaxies probably won’t have the neat, spiral arrangements of the Milky Way or even the Hidden Galaxy. Most galaxies in the early universe are irregular “blobby” galaxies that were the building blocks of larger galaxies.
To prepare for observing these distant and early galaxies, Euclid’s first images included a view of the more local irregular galaxy, NGC 6822, located just 1.6 million light-years from Earth.
Although they provide us with amazingly bright images, Euclid will not only focus on galaxies during his mission.
As the image of NGC 6397 above shows, the space telescope will also be looking at globular clusters. And, thankfully, globular clusters are just as beautiful. These are conglomerates of hundreds of thousands of stars bound together by gravity, and are some of the oldest known structures in the universe.
NGC 6397 is the second closest globular cluster to Earth, about 7,800 light-years away. Globular clusters such as NGC 6397 orbit the disk of the Milky Way and may hold clues to the evolution of our galaxy, or at least other galaxies within which such structures are found.
Euclid will excel in the study of globular clusters because, unlike other telescopes, it has a wide enough field of view to capture entire globular clusters in a single image just as it did for NGC 6397.
So much of the Euclid mission will focus on the unknown, but the last image from the first batch of Euclid releases showed us a familiar celestial object in a whole new light. The dark universe detective was able to create a stunningly detailed panoramic view of the Horse Nebula, also known as Barnard 33.
Located about 1,380 light-years from Earth and located near the eastern end of Orion’s Belt, the Horse Nebula is one of the closest star-forming clouds of gas and dust to the solar system. It is also a wonderful sight to behold.
Although countless telescopes have imaged the Horse Nebula in the past, none have captured this region of the Orion molecular cloud with such a wide and sharp view. What is even more remarkable about this image is that it only took Euclid an hour of observation time to create it. It’s little wonder that professional and amateur astronomers and space fans alike are excited for the upcoming data release on May 23.
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To that end, as stunning as the images above are, there’s a good chance that the best is yet to come from Euclid as it begins to fulfill its mission objectives of shedding strange light on the dark Universe.
We’ll have to wait until early Thursday to see what the next crop of Euclid images delivers and to see how this dark universe detective is starting to live up to its massive mission expectations after nearly a year in space. But, again, if the past is any indication of its future, it’s hard to imagine anything other than a richly informative beauty from these images.
