The Euclid space telescope, launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) last year, is making significant progress in its mission to map dark matter and dark energy.
The telescope has recently unveiled a series of impressive images showcasing various celestial objects, including galaxies, a star-forming region, and a spiral galaxy resembling the Milky Way.
Euclid's latest accomplishments feature an image of the massive galaxy cluster Abell 2390, located 2.7 billion light-years away and containing over 50,000 galaxies. NASA's Jason Rhodes highlighted that Abell 2390 possesses a mass equivalent to about 10 trillion suns. The gravity of this cluster distorts light, indicating the presence of dark matter, which, along with dark energy, constitutes 95 percent of the universe.
Another significant image from Euclid offers the deepest view yet of Messier 78, a star nursery situated 1,300 light-years away in the Orion constellation. This image provides an unprecedented look at star formation, complementing the capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope. A third image captures the galaxy cluster Abell 2764. Despite a pointing error, this image demonstrates Euclid's ability to detect faint objects even near bright stars.
Euclid's observations also led to the discovery of a previously unknown dwarf galaxy in the Dorado cluster and captured a detailed image of the spiral galaxy NGC 6744, which bears a striking resemblance to the Milky Way.
These images, produced in just one day, underscore the telescope's powerful observational capabilities.
The initial scientific studies using Euclid's data have begun, focusing on topics such as orphan stars in the Perseus cluster, which suggest the influence of dark matter. However, it is too early to draw definitive conclusions about dark energy.
The mission has encountered some challenges, including a delicate operation to remove ice clouding the telescope's view. There are indications that ice may be returning, and the team is actively exploring solutions to address this issue.
Euclid's mission is set to last six years, during which it aims to map two billion galaxies across one-third of the sky, with a focus on understanding dark matter and dark energy.