A mosaic of galaxies
A mosaic of galaxies
The European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope, built to capture a 3D map of the universe, just released its first big batch of data. In the less than two years since its launch, the telescope has already prompted new discoveries, and astronomers hope it will one day offer answers about the mysterious nature of dark matter and dark energy.
“All of the science we designed [Euclid] for is starting to roll out exactly and even better than we would have hoped,” says Adam Amara, the U.K. Space Agency’s chief scientist, to Ian Sample at the Guardian. “I’m convinced there’s groundbreaking science in there, and a lot of it.”
The dark universe is thought to make up 95 percent of the cosmos. Astronomers suggest dark matter—an unseen substance that takes up space but doesn’t interact with light—makes up 27 percent of the universe. Dark energy, thought to be a driving force behind the universe’s accelerating expansion, makes up 68 percent. But despite their prevalence, scientists still don’t know much about these concepts—with Euclid, they’re hoping to change that.
“With the release of the first data from Euclid’s survey, we are unlocking a treasure trove of information for scientists to dive into and tackle some of the most intriguing questions in modern science,” Carole Mundell, ESA’s director of science, says in a statement. “With this, ESA is delivering on its commitment to enable scientific progress for generations to come.”
view of space with many galaxies and a purple orb at the center
view of space with many galaxies and a purple orb at the center
The new batch of data includes three mosaics that represent early glances into what will be the Euclid deep fields—areas of sky observed repeatedly, each 30 to 52 times, to create ultra-high-resolution views of space. With a single scan of each region done in just one week, Euclid has already discovered 26 million new galaxies.
Astronomers also released a detailed catalog of more than 380,000 galaxies of different shapes and sizes, classified with the help of humans and artificial intelligence. Finally, teams identified 500 new gravitational lensing candidates, an effect where the light from distant galaxies traveling toward the Earth is bent by normal and dark matter.
Gravitational lenses
Strong gravitational lenses captured by Euclid ESA / Euclid / Euclid Consortium / NASA, image processing by M. Walmsley, M. Huertas-Company, J.-C. Cuillandre
These images are extremely valuable to scientists’ understanding of dark matter. “The invisible dark matter in massive galaxies warps space, bending light rays like a magnifying glass,” explains Mike Walmsley, an astrophysicist at the University of Toronto, to Will Dunham at Reuters. “This magnifies and distorts the galaxies behind them into arcs and rings, and measuring the distortion lets us measure the invisible dark matter. But the galaxies must be very precisely aligned, so this strong lensing effect is very rare.”
“These lenses are already allowing us to learn about our universe, but this is just the beginning for Euclid,” says Natalie Lines, a researcher at the University of Portsmouth in England, in a statement.
Prior to this new data release, scientists had unveiled a few sneak peeks of the telescope’s observations, which have already led to some new discoveries, including a rare Einstein ring.
Over the next six years, the telescope will capture images of more than 1.5 billion galaxies and reveal even more mysteries about the universe. The next data release is set for 2026, and it will cover an area 30 times larger than what was released this week, per Reuters.
“This is a tiny taste of what’s to come, but tiny is not the right word,” Mundell said in a press conference on March 17, reports Space.com’s Robert Lea. “Scientists have a lot of work ahead of them in the next six years, but it’s going to be phenomenally exciting and very, very interesting, groundbreaking work.”