by Europe’s Euclid telescope has sent back the largest images of the universe ever taken from space as it tries to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos.
The five images, released by the European Space Agency (ESA), capture vast new areas of the sky in unprecedented detail, providing an exciting glimpse into the distant cosmic past.
Dr Michelle Collins, from the University of Surrey – who helped the Euclid team identify potential new galaxies in the images – said: “These first stunning images are just the tip of the iceberg.”
She said: “This telescope can reveal millions of new objects in a single day.
“We’re just starting to realize its potential.”
The new images include two galaxy clusters called Abell 2764 and Abell 2390, a group of galaxies called the Dorado, a spiral galaxy called NGC 6744, and a vibrant baby galaxy called Messier 78.
Messier 78 is the closest – just 1,300 light-years away from Earth, while Abell 2390 is the most distant at 2.7 billion light-years away in the constellation Pegasus.
Data from Euclid is expected to shed light on two of the universe’s greatest mysteries: dark energy and dark matter.
Dark matter is composed of particles that do not absorb, reflect, or emit light, and dark energy is believed to be pushing galaxies apart, causing the universe to expand.
Caroline Harper, head of space science at the UK Space Agency, said: “Understanding more about the universe, what it’s made of and how it works is a key part of our purpose as a space agency.
“There is no better example of this than the Euclid mission – we know that most of the universe is made up of invisible dark matter and dark energy, but we don’t really understand what it is, or how it goes affect the way the universe is. emerging.”
Astronomers said the images captured by Euclid are at least four times sharper than those captured using ground-based telescopes.
They were created by combining data from two Euclid instruments: VIS, a visible light camera, and the Near Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP), which captures light from the infrared spectrum.
Professor Mark Cropper, from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at UCL, who led the design and development of the VIS, said: “To achieve its core aim of better understanding dark energy and dark matter, Euclid’s measurements must have been very precise.
“This requires a camera that is extremely stable, extremely intuitive, and the conditions inside it must be very carefully controlled.
“The VIS camera we developed will not only produce beautiful images, but will help us answer fundamental questions about the role of dark energy and dark matter in the evolution of the universe.”
The new results, based on 24 hours of observations, have been described in a series of 10 papers published on the online portal arXiv.
The research focuses on 17 astronomical objects, from nearby clouds of gas and dust to distant clusters of galaxies.
Stephen Serjeant, professor of astronomy at the Open University, said: “The OU is using the beautiful image quality of these very wide images to search for warps in space and time.
“This is where a distant galaxy is visible through the warped space around the foreground.
“It’s one of the few ways we have to see directly that dark matter exists.”
Dr Rebecca Bowler, Ernest Rutherford Fellow at the University of Manchester, said: “It is amazing that these images cover an area of less than 1% of the total deep observations, showing that we expect to detect thousands of early galaxies in the next one. a few years with Euclid, which will be revolutionary in understanding how and when galaxies formed after the Big Bang.”
In total, Euclid has so far produced more than 11 million objects in visible light and a further five million in infrared light.
One of the aims of the mission, launched in July 2023, is to create a 3D map of the universe by observing two billion galaxies that will help scientists understand their cosmic history.
Dr Valeria Pettorino, Euclid project scientist at ESA, said: “Euclid is a unique, ground-breaking mission, and these are the first data sets to be published – it’s an important milestone.
“The images and associated science results are extremely diverse in terms of subjects and observed distances.
“They include various scientific applications, but only represent 24 hours of observation.
“They only give a hint of what Euclid can do.
“We’re looking forward to another six years of data going forward.”
