Euclid space telescope gives stunning sneak peek of the universe in massive cosmic 3D map project
Just the first section of the map has over 100 million celestial finds, such as stars in our Milky Way galaxy and other galaxies beyond as far away as 10 billion light-years.
Euclid telescope's first color images show dazzling edge of darkness
FILE – The European Space Agency released the first full-color images taken by the Euclid telescope, a new spacecraft designed to study dark matter. (Video credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi)
A stunning peek into the deep mysteries of our universe is giving astronomers and stargazers alike just a sliver of what’s to come amid the European Space Agency’s 6-year quest to create the largest cosmic 3D map ever made.
ESA officials released just the first part of the map – a massive 208 gigapixel image that encompasses just 1% of the part of the universe the agency’s Euclid telescope aims to survey.
An ethereal patch of a dark starry sky with millions of tiny dots of light scattered across the image evenly. Mystical swathes of light blue clouds are seeping in from the edges of the picture. Most light sources appear as little points scattered across the dark background, with just a few of them standing out brighter than the rest. A bright, golden yellow star in the upper right quarter of the image draws particular attention. The wispy clouds framing the outskirts of the picture seem to be moving into the image centre and dampen the light of the stars behind. The largest patch of these is visible in the lower left of the picture. In the centre of the upper half of the picture there is a black tilted rectangle devoid of any colour which seems as if a part of the image had been wiped with an eraser.
(ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi / FOX Weather)
The mosaic contains over 260 observations made over two weeks in late March and early April across 132 square degrees of the southern sky, ESA officials said.
Just the first section of the map has over 100 million celestial finds, such as stars in our Milky Way galaxy and other galaxies beyond as far away as 10 billion light-years – measured in time that light has traveled in space to reach Euclid.
"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 ESA, wrote in a news release. "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."
The incredible resolution of the imagery allows astronomers to zoom in and enlarge items hundreds of times to observe the great detail of spiral galaxies and other celestial items.
The centre of the image shows a large white swirl of light, framed by a sea of blackness and a few individual dots and smears of colour in the background. Off-centre to the left of this spiral sits a gleaming circle, the brightest spot of the image. Starting at this white ball of light, sparkling arches trace the shape of a tornado rotating clockwise, spewing glitter into empty space across the image.
(ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi / FOX Weather)
They also hope to study dim "galactic cirrus" clouds that are a mix of gas and dust interspersed between stars in our own galaxy and learn about the hidden influences dark matter and dark energy have on the universe, ESA said.
ESA’s Euclid was launched in July 2023 and began observations in February. The cosmic mapping project is now already 12% complete with additional data release planned in February 2025 and a recap of the first year of the survey due to be published in 2026.