Landmark Data: The Euclid Telescope Begins Mapping the Dark Matter

The Euclid space telescope, launched by the European Space Agency, is making significant strides in mapping dark matter and dark energy.

The Euclid space telescope, launched by the European Space Agency last year, has revealed a stunning array of celestial objects, including galaxies, a vibrant star nursery, and a Milky Way-like spiral galaxy. This marks the second release of images from Euclid, which is on a six-year mission to map two billion galaxies across a third of the sky, focusing on dark matter and dark energy.

Euclid's recent achievements include an image of the massive galaxy cluster Abell 2390, 2.7 billion light years away, containing over 50,000 galaxies. NASA's Jason Rhodes noted that Abell 2390 holds the mass of around 10 trillion suns. The cluster's gravity distorts light, indicating the presence of dark matter, which, along with dark energy, makes up 95 percent of the universe.

Another image offers the deepest view of Messier 78, a star nursery 1,300 light years away in the Orion constellation, highlighting star formation in unprecedented detail. This complements the James Webb Space Telescope's far-reaching capabilities. A third image of the galaxy cluster Abell 2764, despite a pointing error, shows Euclid's ability to detect faint objects near bright stars.