By Chris Skeldon 
On Tuesday (15), the European Space Agency's (ESA) Euclid Space Telescope released the first part of an ambitious map of the universe. The announcement was made during the International Astronautical Congress, in Milan, Italy. The image reveals millions of stars and galaxies with amazing resolution.
This first piece of the cosmic map is a massive 208 gigapixel mosaic, the result of 260 observations made between March 25 and April 8, 2024. In two weeks, Euclid covered an area of 132 square degrees of the southern hemisphere's sky — an area larger by 500 times the area of the full moon.
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The mosaic released represents only 1% of the total mosaic that the telescope will paint over six years. When the mission is complete, Euclid will have created the largest 3D map of the universe, observing the shape, distance and motion of billions of galaxies, about 10 billion light-years away.
This first part of the map is already impressive: there are 100 million sources, including stars in the Milky Way and distant galaxies. Of these galaxies, about 14 million can be used to study the effects of dark matter and dark energy, two great mysteries in science.
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“The image is amazing and represents the beginning of a journey that, in six years, will reveal more than a third of the sky. This is only 1% of the map,” celebrates Valeria Pettorino, Euclid project scientist at the European Space Agency. According to her, the telescope will allow scientists to discover new ways to understand the universe.
What can you see in the pictures taken by Euclid?
Thanks to its highly sensitive cameras, Euclid was able to capture objects in an amazing amount of detail. By magnifying the image up to 600 times, it is possible to see, for example, the complex structure of a spiral galaxy.
In addition to stars and galaxies, the mosaic reveals clouds of gas and dust, called “galactic cirrus,” which reflect light from the Milky Way and shine in infrared light, which were captured by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite.
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This first image is just a preview of what's to come. Since February 2024, when the mission began regular scientific observations, 12% of the survey has already been completed. The next data release, scheduled for March 2025, will include deep-sky regions mapped by Euclid. The first complete cosmological data from the mission will be released in 2026.
About the Euclid telescope
Launched in July 2023, Euclid is the result of an international collaboration involving more than 2,000 scientists from 300 institutions in 15 countries, as well as partners such as NASA. The mission promises to provide unprecedented data on the structure of the universe and the role of dark energy and matter in the evolution of the universe.
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