The European Space Agency's Euclid spacecraft on Wednesday released a massive new set of data as part of its mission to map and uncover the secrets of the so-called “dark universe.”
The new data included deep space images and pictures of thousands of different and distant galaxies, which revealed the structure of the so-called “cosmic web.” A survey of about 380,000 galaxies was also conducted, revealing 500 new candidates for gravitational lenses and many more galaxy clusters and active nuclei.
“The main goal of Euclid is to connect these two concepts to understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy and how they are connected in the Universe,” ESA's Director of Science Carol Mundell said at a press conference on Monday.
“Euclid is really not just a dark universe explorer, it’s also a time machine,” Mandell added. “We’ll go back 10 billion years in cosmic history.”
The Euclid space telescope, which launched in July 2023, is designed to produce images that will help create the most detailed 3-D model of the universe to date.
It began its observations in February 2024 and spent a week scanning three regions of the Universe, with more extensive scans planned for the near future. It recorded 26 million galaxies, the most distant of which was about 10.5 billion light-years away.
The primary mission ends in 2030, and so far Euclid has imaged only 0.4% of the total number of galaxies expected to be found during its lifetime.
Dark matter dominates the mass of known galaxies and plays a key role in their evolution.
The first data set, obtained over a week of observations of known galaxies, collected about 35 terabytes of information.
“To give you an idea, 35 terabytes of data is equivalent to 200 days of streaming video in the highest quality,” Valeria Pettorino, a researcher on the European Space Agency's Euclid project, said Monday.
“If you watch HDR TV, 4K at 60 frames per second for 200 days, that would be equivalent to 35 terabytes,” she added.
In February, Euclid discovered its first “extremely rare” Einstein ring in a galaxy “not too far away,” nearly 600 million light years from Earth.
“The full potential of Euclid to provide additional insights into dark matter and dark energy from the large-scale structure of the cosmic web will only be realized once the full survey is completed,” said Euclid consortium scientist Clotilde Leigl.
ESA scientists say Euclid will release its first year of observations in 2026, with two petabytes of data analyzed using artificial intelligence technologies, equivalent to 31 years of 4K TV streaming, Pettorino continued.
“However, the size of this first data release already provides a unique first glimpse into the large-scale organization of galaxies, which we can use to study how galaxies form over time,” Leigl said.
Sourse: www.upi.com
