Yesterday, the European Euclid Space Telescope mission revealed the first part of its future large map of the universe, which focuses on millions of stars and galaxies, which is equivalent to 1% of what will be displayed in six years.
The first part of the map was presented today by the Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA), Joseph Aschbacher, at the International Astronautical Congress, which continues until Friday in Milan, Italy.
The “mosaic” contains 260 observations made between March 25 and April 8, and within two weeks the telescope “scanned” an extension of the southern sky equivalent to more than 500 times the area of the full moon.
The Euclid telescope, which was sent into space in July 2023 carrying Portuguese technology, will monitor the shapes, distances and movements of billions of galaxies up to 10 billion light-years away, thus creating the largest three-dimensional cosmic telescope. Draw a map.
The first part of the map shows stars from the Milky Way and other galaxies, with 14 million of these galaxies “that can be used to study the hidden influence of dark matter and dark energy in the universe,” the European Space Agency said in a statement.
The European Space Agency also revealed in the images “dark interstellar clouds” in the Milky Way, which “appear light blue against a black background of space” and which “are a mixture of gas and dust.”
Since the Euclid mission began routine science observations in February, 12% of the sky survey has been completed.
Cosmological data collected in the first year of the mission will be released in 2026.
In November 2023, the European Space Agency released the first five images of the universe recorded by the space telescope, in the case of the Perseus galaxy cluster, spiral galaxy IC 342, irregular dwarf galaxy NGC 6822, globular cluster NGC 6397, and the Cape Nebula. horse.
The Euclid Telescope will be located 1.5 million kilometers from Earth and, for six years, will observe billions of galaxies (in which dark matter and dark energy have effects on their structure, shape, distribution, motion and evolution) across more than a third of the Earth. The sky and its “recession” reach 10 billion light-years.
Dark energy and dark matter together make up the 95% of the universe that has yet to be discovered.
ESA's mission is the first designed to try to understand what is actively accelerating the expansion of the universe which, according to cosmological theories, is due to dark energy, a mysterious force that opposes gravitational pull.
The Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences is involved in planning the approximately 50,000 galaxy observations that the telescope will make throughout its mission.
Portuguese companies produced several components for the space telescope.
For the first time, Portugal holds a prominent position in an ESA space mission by being part of a consortium created to develop, build and explore the telescope.
Euclid is the English term for Euclid, the name of the ancient Greek mathematician considered the “father” of geometry and whom the European Space Agency wanted to honor.
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