The five impressive portraits of the cosmos with which the Euclid telescope debuts: "We are ready to observe billions of galaxies"
Four months after taking off from Cape Canaveral, the Euclid space telescope has offered its long-awaited first package of images of the cosmos. Five impressive cosmic portraits that those responsible for this ambitious mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) presented this Tuesday with satisfaction, since the telescope designed to investigate the dark matter and energy of the universe is operating as planned.
The Perseus galaxy cluster, the spiral galaxy IC 342, the irregular galaxy NGC 6822, the globular cluster NGC 6397 and the Horsehead Nebula are the names of these five cosmic portraits with which ESA scientists offer an appetizer of what is to come.
“They are even more beautiful and sharper than we could have expected, showing us many previously invisible features in known areas of the nearby Universe,” confessed René Laureijs, a scientist with ESA's Project Euclid, who assures that we have never seen “astronomical images” before. like these, that contained so much detail”.
As Giuseppe Racca, head of the ESA Euclid project, explained in a statement, “the fact that there is so much detail in these images is due to a special optical design, the perfect manufacturing and assembly of the telescope and the instruments, and an extremely control accurate orientation and temperature.
The Perseus galaxy cluster
Thus, they consider that the portrait of the Perseus galaxy cluster (above these lines), which shows a thousand galaxies belonging to the Perseus cluster, and more than 100,000 additional galaxies further away in the background, “is a revolution for astronomy”. Perseus is one of the most massive structures known in the Universe and is located 240 million light years away from Earth.
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And as ESA has pointed out, “never before has a telescope been able to create such sharp astronomical images, covering such a large portion of the sky, and reaching so far into the distant Universe.”. For those responsible for the space agency, “these five images illustrate the full potential of Euclid and show that the telescope is ready to create the most extensive 3D map of the Universe to date, to reveal some of its hidden secrets”. If everything goes according to plan, Euclid is expected to observe a third of the sky over six years to create this 3D map, which will cover 10 billion of the history of the cosmos.
The spiral galaxy IC 342
Through these observations, cosmologists aim to clarify one of the most intriguing aspects: in the composition of the universe only 5% is ordinary or visible matter, like the matter we are made of, while dark matter would occupy 25% and dark energy, 70%, according to current estimates. Understanding its nature is therefore one of the greatest challenges of cosmology and the main mission of the Euclid telescope, which will investigate this matter at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers in the opposite direction to the Sun, in a place called the second point of Lagrange (L2) of the Sun-Earth system.
“Dark matter binds galaxies together and causes them to spin faster than visible matter alone can explain; dark energy is driving the accelerated expansion of the Universe. “Euclid will allow cosmologists to study these dark, competing mysteries together for the first time,” explained ESA Science Director Carole Mundell.
The irregular galaxy NGC 6822
The images chosen are, according to ESA, “a sample of the telescope's ability to create a remarkably sharp visible and infrared image across a large part of the sky in a single visit.”. Thus, in this album we can see from bright stars to faint galaxies, while remaining extremely sharp even when they approach distant galaxies.
The globular cluster NGC 6397
“We are now ready to observe billions of galaxies and study their evolution over cosmic time,” said René Laureijs.. Likewise, these five images individually contain a large amount of new information about the nearby Universe, so as Yannick Mellier, leader of the Euclid consortium, explained, “in the coming months, scientists will analyze these images and publish a series of scientific articles in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, along with articles on the scientific objectives of the Euclid mission and the performance of the instrument.
The Euclid mission has a budget of about 1 billion euros, with Thales Alenia Space Italia as the main contractor of an industrial consortium to which 80 companies contribute, a dozen of which are Spanish.
The dissemination of Euclid's first album, one of the main ESA missions this year, coincides with the celebration of the Space Congress in Seville. The acting Minister of Science and Innovation, Diana Morant, chaired this Tuesday in the Andalusian capital the Informal Ministerial Meeting on Space Competitiveness, held within the framework of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU.
As reported by ESA and the Ministry of Science, those responsible for space in ESA member countries “have addressed key issues to promote European space cooperation, which improves the lives of citizens and contributes to the digital transition and ecological”.
The objectives include “strengthening European strategic autonomy of space-based infrastructure and services” and “reducing the EU's strategic dependence on the aerospace value chain and how to protect European space assets and make them more competitive and resilient.” against future crises or threats”.
The ESA has also proposed a competition between European companies to build a robotic ship that carries cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) and that could in the future be adapted to transport material to other destinations such as the Moon, according to what the director of the space agency, Josef Aschbacher.