The interaction between two distant galaxies, captured by Euclid
ESA
A mosaic of images from the European Space Agency’s Euclid Space Telescope captures more than 14 million galaxies, offering a first glimpse of a ‘cosmic atlas’. The mapping project could enrich our understanding of the role that dark matter and dark energy play in the structure of the universe.
“The scale is totally incomprehensible” Carole Mundellthe scientific director of ESA, declared during a meeting of the International Astronautical Congress in Italy on October 15. Representing the image at full resolution would require more than 16,000 4K TV screens, she said.
Euclid’s first mosaic image represents only 1% of the final map
ESA
The mosaic of 260 images is the first glimpse of Euclid’s plan to create the largest and most accurate map of the universe again. The large number of galaxies was captured during a two-week survey in April and represents only 1% of the final map. The image covers an area of the southern sky about 500 times the size of the full moon.
The wispy blue band in the image represents dust and gas in the nearby Milky Way, known as the “galactic cirrus,” Mundell said. Zooming in reveals swirling, interacting galaxies hundreds of millions of light years away, some with a supermassive black hole at their center that can produce measurable gravitational waves on Earth.
Over the next six years, the telescope will autonomously explore about a third of the night sky. The researchers predict that the final map will show about 8 billion galaxies, each containing billions of stars, spanning 10 billion years of cosmic history.
By observing galaxy clusters and other phenomena, such as how gravity bends light, “Euclid will measure the cosmic web – the distribution of matter in space and time,” the ESA said . Valerie Pettorino at the meeting. Because dark energy and dark matter affect the formation of voids between galaxy clusters, measuring these voids could help us understand the characteristics of these elusive substances, she said.
“We are testing the fundamental laws of physics at the extreme scales of the cosmos,” Mundell said.
