The first images sent back by the Euclid space telescope from its “dark universe” mission have been revealed. On Tuesday, November 7, astronomers hailed the powerful space telescope, which captured detailed colour images of the cosmos. The Euclid telescope’s initial release includes five space observations made from its orbital home, 1 million miles or 1.5 million km away from the Earth. Before unveiling the pictures Euclid project scientist René Laureijs said, “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,” Laureijs added. Back in July, the European Space Agency first launched the Euclid telescope, calling it their “dark universe detective.” According to the ESA, Euclid will observe the shapes, distances, and motions of billions of galaxies spanning over 10 billion light-years over the next six years. This will lead to the creation of the largest cosmic 3D map ever made with the primary goal of observing dark matter and dark energy in the cosmos.
ESA’s director of science Carole Mundell said before revealing the high-quality pictures, “I’m absolutely delighted to say that is the point where we say that we have reached all of our engineering milestones for the mission and we’re now able to move into the science phase.” In a never-seen-before series of pictures, the striking Perseus Cluster and its 1,000 galaxies, along with its 100,000 additional distant galaxies in the background can be seen in an unfathomable detail. The space telescope also observed spiral galaxy IC 342 a.k.a “The Hidden Galaxy.”