The European Space Agency has published a set of 5 color photographs taken by the new Euclid space telescope. The result of just 24 hours of observations, they demonstrate the potential of this new instrument, whose primary mission is to carry out a vast observation campaign of the cosmos to map the position and characteristics of millions of galaxies, in order to study dark matter and dark energy. . The images are extremely spectacular and offer a demonstration of the stunning definition of the Euclid Space Telescope’s instruments.
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The first image, absolutely stunning, portrays the super galaxy cluster Abell 2390. By opening the original image, it is possible to realize how what at first glance appear to be stars are actually galaxies: the shot portrays something like over 50,000 galaxies, for a total mass of over 10 trillion times that of our Sun. This image (from the ESA website it is possible to download it in TIF format for over 250 Megabytes of files) will allow us to map the position of thousands of galaxies and study dark matter whose presence can be determined by the effects of gravitational lensing which reveals the presence of further galaxies even more distant.
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Equally astonishing is the definition with which Euclid portrayed the Messier 78 star formation region, in the constellation of Orion 1300 light years from us. This is an unprecedented shot in this level of detail for this region where new stars are born, created by combining visible light and infrared instruments, thus allowing us to see beyond the interstellar dust and portraying bodies slightly more massive than Jupiter. The photo portrays over 300,000 objects including stars, stars in formation, but also candidates for brown dwarfs and interstellar planets.
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The third shot portrays the spiral galaxy NGC 6744, once again with an unprecedented level of detail, so much so that astronomers have identified a new dwarf satellite galaxy whose existence was unknown until now. The high definition of the image taken by Euclid will allow us to count the number of stars, but above all how the spiral arms and the gas and dust structures interact leading to the formation of new stars.
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This shot of the galaxy cluster Abell 2764 aims to demonstrate the wide viewing angle of the Euclid telescope. The cluster is located in the upper right corner, and the wide camera angle allows researchers to observe and measure its radius, while keeping surrounding areas and distant galaxies in the same field. The bright star at the bottom left is called V*BP-Phoenicis/HD 1973 and belongs to our galaxy. It is found in the southern sky, where it is actually barely visible to the naked eye.
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The last shot portrays the group of galaxies in the Dorado constellation, visible in the southern hemisphere. It is a significant subject because it is made up of young galaxies, still in the process of forming new stars, which are interacting with each other due to mutual gravitational attraction. The hope is that images like this can help understand how groups of galaxies formed in correspondence with clusters of dark matter.
On the ESA website you can find detailed descriptions of the images and how and with which tools they were obtained, as well as links to download the photographs at maximum resolution. You can also review the original announcement video of these spectacular images. The publication of the photos is accompanied by the release of 10 scientific articles with the first results.
