“Messier 78”: a bright star cluster surrounded by interstellar dust.
Source: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA/J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi/dpa
“Euclid” was launched last summer – now we can admire detailed images of the European probe. Even things that were previously hidden can be seen.
Rand half a year after the first images were taken, further images from the European probe “Euclid” have been presented. One shows the galaxy cluster “Abell 2390” with around 50,000 galaxies: a “beautiful example” of a so-called gravitational lens that forms huge curved arches in the sky, as was said at the presentation by the European Space Agency ESA at the Space Council in Brussels.
The mass of the cluster causes the light from galaxies that lie behind «Abell 2390» to be distorted – the phenomenon is called gravitational lensing.
Another image shows “Messier 78”, a bright star cluster surrounded by interstellar dust. “Euclid” used its infrared camera to make hidden regions of star formation visible and discovered newly formed stars and planets. Images of the galaxy “NGC 6744”, the galaxy cluster “Abell 2764” and the so-called Dorado galaxy group were also presented.
Within just 24 hours, a total of over eleven million objects were recorded in visible light and another five million in infrared light, according to ESA. “This space telescope is intended to answer the biggest open questions in cosmology,” said Valeria Pettorino, ESA’s “Euclid” project scientist. “And these first observations clearly show that ‘Euclid’ is more than up to the task.”
The images obtained with “Euclid” are at least four times sharper than those taken by ground-based telescopes, according to ESA. They cover large areas of the sky at unrivalled depths and look far into the distant universe with both visible and infrared light.
The probe was launched into space in early July 2023. At its heart is a high-resolution telescope equipped with two cameras – one for the visible wavelength range and one for the near-infrared range. They are intended to map the movements and shapes of galaxies or help to determine the distance of galaxies.
ESA wants to take a look into the past of the universe and research its development over the past ten billion years. In total, data on billions of galaxies will be collected and a 3D map of the universe with time as a component will be created.