The European Space Agency (ESA) is releasing five new images from the Euclid Space Telescope today (May 23). And if the collection of previous films is anything to go by – space fans should be in for an absolute treat.
“Five new portraits of our universe were captured during Euclid’s early observational phase, each revealing exciting new science.” ESA officials said in a statement. “Euclid’s ability to unravel the mysteries of the universe is something you won’t want to miss.”
The new images will be revealed at 5:00 am EDT (1200 CEST) and will be accompanied by an incredible 10 scientific papers. You can watch the data release live on ESA YouTube channel.
Related: Euclid’s ‘dark universe’ telescope becomes icy from a million miles away
As an appetizer for this event, we can remind ourselves of the incredible cosmic images this mission has provided so far.
Euclid’s story so far
Launching on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida on July 1, 2023, Euclid is a wide-angle space telescope with a 600-megapixel camera that monitors the universe in visible light, the near-infrared spectrum, and a photometer. Used to determine the redshift of galaxies. Knowing the redshift allows scientists to figure out how fast distant galaxies are moving away from our planet.
Euclid’s primary aim was to explore two mysterious components of the universe: dark energy and dark matter. These phenomena are collectively known as the “dark universe”.
Dark energy is the name given to any force that accelerates the expansion of the universe. Dark matter, on the other hand, is a form of matter that is effectively invisible because it does not interact with light. Scientists know that this is not the “ordinary” matter made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons that make up stars, planets, moons, and our bodies. Its existence can only be known through interactions with thematic gravity, which can affect normal matter and light. However, to be clear, neither dark matter nor dark energy is necessarily made of matter. Both may be made of several substances – or, they may each be made of the same substance.
The thing is, we simply don’t know.
Nevertheless, dark energy accounts for about 68% of the universe’s energy and matter budget, while dark matter accounts for about 27%. That means the dark universe is 95% of the matter in the universe and the stuff we actually understand is only 5%.
Thus, Euclid clearly has his work cut out for him, called the “dark-universe detective” because of his particular set of tools. But sure enough, the first official images of the space telescope released on November 7, 2023, after its first four months in space, show it’s fit for duty.
Above is one of the first images seen by the public from Euclid’s telescope. This is a snapshot showing 1,000 galaxies, all belonging to the Perseus cluster. Located about 240 million light-years from Earth, the cluster is one of the largest structures in the known universe.
Mapping galaxies in such large volumes is crucial to understanding how dark matter is distributed and how this distribution has affected the evolution of the universe.
Beyond the wealth of Perseus cluster galaxies, the image showed another 100,000 distant galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars. Observations of such large numbers of distant galaxies were crucial for Euclid to unravel how dark energy moves faster and faster by accelerating the expansion of space between these galaxies.
Just because Euclid has its eyes on vast swaths of galaxies doesn’t mean it can’t draw images of single galaxies.
Another of the first Euclid images we should look to for a tool to uncover the dark elements of the universe was somewhat ironic. Because it identified the galaxy IC 342, also known as the “Hidden Galaxy”.
The galaxy is located about 11 million light-years from Earth and is difficult to image because it lies behind the Milky Way’s bright dusty disk. However, that didn’t stop Euclid from capturing an incredible image of this once hidden spiral galaxy. To do this, the space telescope used its near-infrared instrument because the gas and dust of the Milky Way’s disk are less efficient at absorbing infrared light compared to other wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation.
To unravel the mysteries of the dark universe and create a detailed 3D map of the universe, Euclid needed to see galaxies 10 billion light-years away, and the 13.8-billion-year-old universe less than 4. Billions of years after the Big Bang.
These galaxies do not have the neat, spiral-like structures of the Milky Way or the Obscured Galaxy. Most galaxies in the early universe were poorly shaped irregular galaxies that served as building blocks for larger galaxies.
To prepare for observing these distant and early galaxies, Euclid’s first images included a view of the local irregular galaxy NGC 6822, located 1.6 million light-years from Earth.
Although they provide us with spectacularly bright images, Euclid did not focus solely on galaxies during his work.
As the image of NGC 6397 above demonstrates, the space telescope is also looking at globular clusters. And, thankfully, globular clusters are beautiful. They are collections of hundreds of thousands of stars bound together by gravity, and are some of the oldest structures in the known universe.
NGC 6397 is the second closest globular cluster to Earth at a distance of 7,800 light-years. Globular clusters such as NGC 6397 orbit the disk of the Milky Way, and such structures have been observed in the evolution of our galaxy, or at least in other galaxies.
Euclid excels in the study of globular clusters because, unlike other telescopes, it has a field of view wide enough to capture entire globular clusters in one image, as it did for NGC 6397.
Much of Euclid’s work focused on the unknown, but the last image in the first volume of Euclid’s publications actually showed the familiar celestial body in an entirely new light. A dark cosmic detective has managed to produce an amazingly detailed view of the Horsehead Nebula, also known as Barnard 33.
Located about 1,380 light-years from Earth and east of Orion’s Belt, the Horsehead Nebula is one of the closest star-forming gas and dust clouds to the Solar System. It is also very beautiful to look at.
Although a wealth of telescopes have imaged the Horseshoe Nebula in the past, none have captured this region of the Orion molecular cloud with such a wide and sharp view. What is even more astonishing about this picture is that it took Euclid an hour of observation time to create it. No wonder professional and amateur astronomers and space enthusiasts alike are excited for the upcoming May 23 data release.
To that end, as breathtaking as the images described above are, while shedding a curious light on a dark universe, there’s a good chance that even better ones are to come as Euclid begins to meet its mission objectives.
We’ll have to wait until early Jupiter to see what the next crop of Euclid images has to offer and see how this dark cosmic detective begins to live up to its lofty mission expectations after nearly a year in space. But then again, if its past is any indication of its future, it’s hard to imagine anything but informative beauty from these films.
