The Great Cosmic Atlas Begins: Euclid’s 208-Gigapixel Image Maps 14 Million Galaxies

ESA scientists contiguous revealed the archetypal chunk of what volition beryllium the largest-ever 3D representation of the cosmos.

The sparkling purplish-blue tapestry showcases information from 260 observations by the Euclid abstraction telescope, the agency’s cutting-edge acheronian substance observatory. Over the telescope’s projected six-year lifetime, it will cod data that volition assistance scientists recognize the natures of acheronian substance and acheronian energy, which unneurotic comprise 95% of the known universe.

The 208-gigapixel representation showcases an country of the confederate entity astir 500 times the country of the afloat Moon, arsenic seen betwixt March 25, 2024 and April 8, 2024. The representation mosaic is conscionable 1% of the wide survey Euclid volition yet capture, which volition see billions of galaxies extending acold into the universe’s past. This archetypal representation shows 14 cardinal galaxies, arsenic good arsenic tens of millions of stars from our ain Milky Way.

“This stunning representation is the archetypal portion of a representation that volition uncover much than 1 3rd of the entity successful six years,” said Valeria Pettorino, a Euclid task idiosyncratic astatine ESA, successful a Max Planck Institute for Astronomy release. “This is conscionable 1% of the map, and yet it is afloat of a assortment of sources that volition assistance scientists observe caller ways to picture the Universe.”

A spiral postulation arsenic seen by Euclid. Image: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, representation processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

The supra representation of a spiral postulation is simply a fraction of the mosaic included astatine the apical of this article. The country successful the representation is zoomed successful astir 600 times compared to the full-size mosaic, and shows a postulation astir 420 cardinal light-years from Earth. The full country of the supra representation is conscionable 0.0003% of the 208-gigapixel image—which itself lone accounts for 1% of the full Euclid wide survey.

According to the institute release, astir 12% of the survey has been completed truthful far, with astir 100 gigabytes of information sent to Earth from the spacecraft each day. This information volition bash much than constitute beauteous pictures—it’ll hint scientists into the organisation of acheronian substance passim the universe, arsenic good arsenic phenomena wherever acheronian substance manifests itself, similar successful gravitational lenses.

The Euclid squad published the $1.4 cardinal spacecraft’s first images successful November 2023, showcasing what the abstraction observatory was susceptible of. Those images included shots of the Perseus postulation cluster, spiral and irregular galaxies, a globular cluster, and the Horsehead Nebula, and came connected the heels of trial images revealed to the public successful August 2023.