ESA’s Euclid Space Telescope Releases First Images, Marks Beginning of Quest for Dark Energy

Euclid, the "dark universe" telescope, is already working on achieving its mission. The European Space Agency (ESA) just released the first photos obtained from its ambitious project.

ESA Releases Euclid's First Images

The Euclid telescope, operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), transmitted its initial photographs to Earth on Monday (July 31). These iconic images are captivating but also attest to the observatory's instruments' top-notch performance.

Since Euclid's goal is to map out the dark side of the cosmos by studying billions of galaxies that are up to around 10 billion light-years away, the machine's success thus far is quite intriguing. Better yet, the agency claims that this ambitious map will also be in "3D," as it will incorporate the concept of time to demonstrate how various regions developed alongside a developing universe, Space.com reported.

The remarkable first photographs made possible by Euclid's visible and near-infrared instruments herald a new era for observational cosmology and statistical astronomy, Yannick Mellier, chief scientist for the Euclid Consortium and astronomer at the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, said in a statement. She added that they marked the start of the investigation into the fundamentals of dark energy.

The photographs were obtained with a device on Euclid called VIS or "Visible Instrument." As its name implies, VIS catches the universe via the electromagnetic spectrum region visible to human eyes, with wavelengths between 550 and 900 nanometers. A side-by-side image displays the zoomed-in view on the right and the complete field of vision of the VIS on the left.

Several unmissable sparkling stars, cosmic rays blasting straight across the landscape, and, most crucially, a few fuzzy blobs are some of the images captured by VIS that stand out. According to ESA, those lumps are galaxies that Euclid will study in greater detail as it creates a highly accurate map of our universe, including dark energy.

Reiko Nakajima, a VIS instrument scientist, stated in the statement that images of galaxies and star clusters are not available from ground-based experiments. Still, they are all present in this one field. It is lovely to look at, and it is enjoyable with the people we have worked with for a very long time.

According to ESA, the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP) has two purposes. Infrared light, which falls between approximately 950 and 2020 nanometers on the electromagnetic spectrum and is invisible to human sight, is the first type of light that can be used to picture galaxies. Since the James Webb Space Telescope can also observe these infrared wavelengths, scientists frequently claim that it reveals a previously hidden world. In all actuality, it is.

Second, the precise amount of light that each galaxy emits may be measured by NISP; this information can be used to determine how far away the galaxies are.

The NISP images resemble the VIS set in that the left side displays the entire NISP field while the right only displays a zoomed-in area. But the deep space light that Euclid observed also goes through several chilly filters before it reaches the NISP detector. And the outcomes are fantastic.

The NISP's galactic distance measurements are aided by the ability of these filters to perform tasks like measuring brightness at a particular infrared wavelength.

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Significance of Euclid's Photos

Knud Jahnke, who works on the NISP instrument for Euclid at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, expressed his delight in the telescope's and the two instruments' excellent performance in space even though these initial test images cannot yet be used for scientific purposes.

For example, scientists can identify the chemical composition of a galaxy and its distance from Earth. William Gillard, NISP instrument scientist, claimed they had seen synthetic images and photos from lab tests. However, he still had trouble accepting that the world they see today is the actual one due to its incredible detail.

In a previous report from Science Times, Euclid will potentially help us find answers to the questions related to dark matter. Euclid's mission is to learn more about dark energy and matter's physical properties.