The European Space Agency (ESA) will release five new images from the Euclid space telescope on Thursday (May 23). And, well, if the previous set of photos is anything to go by – space fans should be in for an absolute treat.
“Five new portraits of our cosmos were captured during the early phase of the Euclid observations, each revealing stunning new science,” ESA officials said in a statement. “Euclid’s ability to unlock the secrets of the cosmos is something you won’t want to miss.”
The new images will be revealed at 05:00 EDT (12:00 CEST) and will be accompanied by 10 incredible scientific papers. You can watch the data release live on ESA’s YouTube channel.
Connected: Euclid’s ‘dark universe’ telescope is lifted from the ice from a million miles away
As an appetizer for the occasion, perhaps we can remind ourselves of the incredible cosmic images this mission has provided so far.
The story of Euclid so far
Launched on July 1, 2023 from Cape Canaveral in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Euclid is a wide-angle space telescope carrying a 600-megapixel camera that surveys the cosmos in visible light, a near-infrared spectrometer and a photometer used to determine the redshift of galaxies. Knowing the redshift allows scientists to understand how fast distant galaxies are moving away from our planet.
Euclid’s main mission is to investigate the two most mysterious elements of the universe: dark energy and dark matter. These phenomena together make up what is often called the “dark universe”.
Dark energy is the placeholder name given to any force that causes the expansion of the universe to accelerate. Dark matter, on the other hand, is a form of matter that is effectively invisible because it does not interact with light. This means that scientists know that it is not the “ordinary” matter made up of electrons, protons and neutrons that comprises stars, planets, the moon and our bodies. Dark matter can only make its presence known through its interactions with gravity, which, in turn, can affect ordinary matter and light. To be clear, however, neither dark matter nor dark energy are necessarily composed of the same thing. Both may be composed of many things—or, perhaps indeed each of them is composed of one homogeneous thing.
The point is, we just don’t know.
However, dark energy is thought to make up about 68% of the energy and matter budget of the universe, while dark matter makes up about 27%. This means that the dark universe makes up 95% of the stuff in the universe and the stuff we actually understand makes up only about 5%.
So, called a “dark universe detective” because of his specific suite of instruments, Euclid clearly has his work cut out for him. But sure enough, the first official images from the space telescope released on November 7, 2023, after its first four months in space, showed that it is on duty.
Just above is one of the first images the public saw from the Euclid telescope. It’s a picture showing about 1,000 galaxies, all belonging to the Perseus cluster. Located about 240 million light years from Earth, this cluster is one of the largest structures in the known universe.
Mapping galaxies at such large volumes is key to understanding how dark matter is distributed and how this distribution has affected the evolution of the universe.
Beyond the wealth of galaxies in the Perseus cluster, the image also revealed 100,000 other much more distant galaxies, each containing up to hundreds of billions of stars. Observations of distant galaxies in large numbers like this are the key for Euclid to discover how dark energy is pushing these galaxies apart faster and faster, accelerating the expansion of the space between them.
Just because Euclid has his eyes on large areas of galaxies doesn’t mean he can’t impress with images of single galaxies.
Another of Euclid’s first images to look at was somewhat ironically for an instrument charged with discovering the dark elements of the universe. That’s because it identified the galaxy IC 342, also known as the “Hidden Galaxy.”
This galaxy is located about 11 million light-years from Earth and is difficult to image because it lies behind the bright and dusty disk of the Milky Way. However, this did not stop Euclid from capturing an incredible image of this once hidden spiral galaxy. To do this, the space telescope used its near-infrared instrument, which is advantageous because the gas and dust of the Milky Way’s disk are less effective 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 cosmos, Euclid will need to look at distant galaxies up to 10 billion light-years away by looking at the 13.8 billion-year-old universe since it was less than 4 billion years after the Big Bang.
These galaxies likely do not have regular arrangements, like the spirals of the Milky Way or even the Hidden Galaxy. Most galaxies in the early universe are weakly 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 most irregular local galaxy, NGC 6822, located just 1.6 million light-years from Earth.
Although they provide us with spectacularly bright images, Euclid will not only focus on galaxies during its mission.
As the image of NGC 6397 above shows, the space telescope will also observe globular clusters. And, thankfully, globular clusters are just as beautiful. These are conglomerates of hundreds of thousands of stars bound together by gravity, and they are some of the oldest structures in the known universe.
NGC 6397 is the second closest globular cluster to Earth at only about 7,800 light-years away. Globular clusters like NGC 6397 orbit the disk of the Milky Way and may contain clues about the evolution of our galaxy, or at least of other galaxies such structures are contained within.
Euclid will excel at studying 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 the Euclid mission will focus on the unknown, but the latest image from the first set of Euclid releases actually showed us a familiar celestial object in a whole new light. The dark universe detective was able to create a stunningly detailed panoramic view of the Horsehead Nebula, also known as Barnard 33.
Located about 1,380 light-years from Earth and located just to the east of Orion’s Belt, the Horsehead Nebula is one of the closest clouds of star-forming gas and dust to the solar system. It’s also quite a sight to behold.
Although a host of telescopes have imaged the Horsehead Nebula in the past, none have captured this region of the Orion molecular cloud in such a wide and sharp view. What is even more surprising about this image is that it took Euclid only an hour of observation time to create it. It’s no wonder that professional and amateur astronomers and space enthusiasts are excited about the upcoming data release on May 23.
To that end, as stunning as the images detailed above are, there’s a good chance the best is yet to come from Euclid as it begins to fulfill its mission objectives by shedding a curious light on the universe of dark.
We’ll have to wait until early Thursday to see what the next crop of Euclid images will bring, and to see how this dark universe detective is starting to live up to its lofty mission expectations after almost a year in space. But then again, if her past is any indication of her future, it’s hard to imagine anything but information-rich beauty from these images.
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Image Source : www.space.com