The European Space Agency's (ESA) Euclid space telescope released its first dataset, unveiling detailed images of millions of galaxies and offering new insights into dark matter and dark energy. Less than two years after its launch, the mission has published 34 scientific articles.
Among the most remarkable findings is the discovery of galaxies located up to 10.5 billion light-years away, demonstrating Euclid's unprecedented capabilities in mapping the distant universe. This achievement provides a first look at the large-scale organization of galaxies in the cosmic web, hinting at its structure as the backbone of the universe.
The new data release covers only 0.5% of what the Euclid space telescope will ultimately scan during its entire mission, representing just a week of observation time, including one scan of each of the three regions. Despite this, the telescope has already captured images of 26 million galaxies, covering 10 billion years of cosmic history, and has cataloged over 380,000 galaxies based on their morphology, according to NASA.
"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," said Carole Mundell, ESA's Director of Science.
The Euclid mission, launched from Florida in July 2023, aims to explore cosmic history and the invisible forces shaping the universe, including dark energy and dark matter. With a budget of 1.5 billion euros, the telescope was sent into space with Portuguese technology on board, according to Deutsche Welle.
To achieve its goal, Euclid will conduct measurements of the sky for six years, sending about 100 gigabytes of data daily back to Earth, totaling more than two petabytes, according to Science Focus. During its mission, the telescope is expected to capture images of more than 1.5 billion galaxies, greatly enhancing our understanding of the universe's development over 10 billion years of cosmic history.
According to NASA, the next release of Euclid data is expected to cover an area 30 times larger than the current release, with major releases planned for October 2026. Scientists are eagerly anticipating these future datasets, which will provide even more comprehensive insights into the cosmos.
Gravitational lensing is one of the tools that Euclid uses to study the distribution of dark matter, helping scientists understand dark matter and dark energy. By analyzing how light is warped, researchers can create detailed maps of dark matter distribution and begin to decipher its properties.
The newly released images also confirm the gravitational lensing effect proposed by Albert Einstein in 1912. Researchers have identified about 500 strong gravitational lenses in the data.
"This represents the first part of what will be the largest catalog ever made on the detailed appearance of galaxies," said Mike Walmsley, an astrophysicist at the University of Toronto. The catalog provides detailed information about galaxies' morphology, helping experts understand how spiral arms in galaxies arise.
Artificial intelligence and citizen scientists have played a crucial role in Euclid's mission. Over 1,000 citizen scientists have contributed through the Space Warps project on the Zooniverse platform, helping to identify strong lensing candidates.
According to EurekAlert, the mission's success is also due to international collaboration. The Euclid Consortium consists of more than 2,000 scientists from 300 institutes in 15 European countries, the United States, Canada, and Japan, with scientists at MPIA playing leading roles in numerous Euclid studies.
Euclid's instruments, including the high-resolution visible imaging instrument VIS, a 609-million-pixel super-camera, enable the determination of galaxy shapes and distributions. The telescope's NISP is a 64-megapixel Near Infrared Spectrometer that accurately determines galaxy distances and masses, providing valuable information about the rate of expansion of the universe and the nature of dark energy.
According to NASA, scientists anticipate that by the end of its prime mission, Euclid will have observed the deep fields for a total of about 40 weeks, having completed week-long observations of three deep fields, marking the beginning of its most detailed investigations. "We will observe each deep field between 30 and 52 times during the Euclid mission, improving each time the resolution and the number of objects we can observe," said Valeria Pettorino, ESA's Euclid project scientist. "Think of how many discoveries await us."
"This data release is the first clear evidence that Euclid will be a unique, rare object finder as well as an exquisite dark energy measuring machine," said Professor Adam Amara, Chief Scientist at the UK Space Agency.
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.