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Euclid 'dark universe' telescope reveals 1st breathtaking images from massive 'cosmic atlas' map (msn.com)
Pretty impressive
The Euclid Space Telescope has revealed the "first page" of the cosmic atlas it is building. The section of the map of the cosmos being built by Euclid was released on Monday (Oct. 15), and it features tens of millions of stars within the Milky Way and around 14 million distant galaxies beyond our own.
The vast cosmic mosaic was constructed from 260 Euclid observations collected between March 25 and April 8, 2024 and contains 208 gigapixels of data. The region charted is around 500 times as wide as the full moon appears in the sky over Earth.
Perhaps most astoundingly, the mosaic accounts for just 1% of the total survey Euclid will conduct over the next six years as it tracks the shapes, distances and movements of galaxies as far as 10 billion light-years away. Not only will this result in the largest 3D map of the cosmos ever created, but the vast scale of this map will help scientists investigate the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, sometimes collectively known as the "dark universe."
"This stunning image is the first piece of a map that in six years will reveal more than one-third of the sky," Valeria Pettorino, Euclid Project Scientist at the European Space Agency (ESA), said in a statement. "This is just 1% of the map, and yet it is full of a variety of sources that will help scientists discover new ways to describe the universe."
Launched in July 2023, Euclid began making scientific observations in February. This wide-angle space telescope with a 600-megapixel camera is able to record visible light and near-infrared light using a spectrometer. This enables us to measure "redshift," the changes in which wavelengths of light reach us caused as galaxies race away from the Milky Way.
The vast cosmic mosaic was constructed from 260 Euclid observations collected between March 25 and April 8, 2024 and contains 208 gigapixels of data. The region charted is around 500 times as wide as the full moon appears in the sky over Earth.
Perhaps most astoundingly, the mosaic accounts for just 1% of the total survey Euclid will conduct over the next six years as it tracks the shapes, distances and movements of galaxies as far as 10 billion light-years away. Not only will this result in the largest 3D map of the cosmos ever created, but the vast scale of this map will help scientists investigate the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, sometimes collectively known as the "dark universe."
"This stunning image is the first piece of a map that in six years will reveal more than one-third of the sky," Valeria Pettorino, Euclid Project Scientist at the European Space Agency (ESA), said in a statement. "This is just 1% of the map, and yet it is full of a variety of sources that will help scientists discover new ways to describe the universe."
Launched in July 2023, Euclid began making scientific observations in February. This wide-angle space telescope with a 600-megapixel camera is able to record visible light and near-infrared light using a spectrometer. This enables us to measure "redshift," the changes in which wavelengths of light reach us caused as galaxies race away from the Milky Way.