First full-color images from Euclid space telescope unveiled
The European Space Agency (ESA) released its first full-color images from the Euclid space telescope on Tuesday. Scientists working in the Netherlands are in large part responsible for processing and storing the massive amount of data collected by Euclid, and combining it with data gathered by other telescopes.
Euclid is a space telescope designed to map the geometry of the dark Universe. It aims to understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy by accurately measuring the accelerated expansion of the Universe. Launched in July 2023, Euclid uses a 1.2-meter telescope to capture high-precision images of billions of galaxies over a six-year mission.
What makes Euclid’s view of the cosmos special is “its ability to create a remarkably sharp visible and infrared image across a huge part of the sky in just one sitting,” the ESA wrote. The first five images were shared on Tuesday. According to ESA, “Never before has a telescope been able to create such razor-sharp astronomical images across such a large patch of the sky, and looking so far into the distant Universe.”
The photographs include the Horsehead Nebula, a dark nebula resembling a horse's head when viewed from Earth against a backdrop of bright gas. Another image shows the Perseus Cluster with about a thousand galaxies and more than 100,000 galaxies in the background, many previously unseen. Other images feature the spiral galaxy IC 342, known as the “Hidden Galaxy,” the irregular galaxy NGC 6822, and the globular cluster NGC 6397.
“We have never seen astronomical images like this before, containing so much detail. They are even more beautiful and sharp than we could have hoped for, showing us many previously unseen features in well-known areas of the nearby Universe,” said René Laureijs, ESA’s Euclid Project Scientist.
“The first images captured by Euclid are awe-inspiring and remind us of why it is essential that we go to space to learn more about the mysteries of the Universe,” said ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher.
The ESA indicates that these five images demonstrate the full potential of the Euclid telescope, revealing that it is ready to produce the most comprehensive 3D map of the Universe to date, which could help uncover cosmic mysteries.
Scientists in Groningen responsible for handling Euclid's data
Launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in July, Euclid is sending data from about 1.6 million kilometers from Earth. “The space telescope will collect about forty petabytes of data. That is the equivalent of streaming feature films 24 hours a day for a hundred years, in 4K quality,” said the Netherlands Space Office days before the launch.
“We combine this data with another sixty petabytes of data from telescopes here on Earth about the distance of galaxies compared to the Earth,” said Edwin Valentijn. “So it concerns insane amounts of data.”
The ESA asked Valentijn’s team to develop the method for handling all of the data. The scientist is a University of Groningen professor specialized in developing information technology for the field of astronomy. He and his colleagues created such systems for the Low-Frequency Array, which has a base in Drenthe, and the VLT Survey Telescope in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.
“I am extremely proud that we can use Dutch technology for this groundbreaking mission,” Valentijn said in a statement. He developed Euclid’s data processing system with the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy, a partnership between the institutes of astronomy at the Universities of Amsterdam, Groningen, Leiden and Nijmegen. The project was largely financed by the Dutch Research Council, known domestically as the NWO.
