The «Euclid» telescope team has released five new images of the cosmos that showcase a multitude of celestial objects in unprecedented detail. The «Euclid» is called the «Dark Universe Detector» because its primary mission is to explore two of the most mysterious elements of space: dark energy and dark matter.
Dark energy is the name given to the force that causes the expansion of the Universe to accelerate, while dark matter is a form of matter that is virtually invisible because it does not interact with light. It is not the usual matter composed of electrons, protons, and neutrons.
This invisible dark universe is a big problem for scientists because it is believed that dark energy makes up about 68% of all matter in the universe, while dark matter makes up about 27% — together they make up 95% of the matter in the universe, and what humans can see — only 5%. It is expected that «Euclid» will be able to probe these mysterious substances. The new images are part of the telescope’s early observations.
The five new images published by the «Euclid» team are at least four times sharper than those taken by ground-based telescopes. Covering vast swaths of the sky, they also feature unparalleled depth, as Euclid peers far into the distant Universe with a 600 MP camera that observes celestial targets in visible light, as well as a near-infrared spectrometer.
One of the photos shows Abell 2390, a giant cluster of Milky Way-like galaxies located about 2.7 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus.
The image contains a staggering 50,000 galaxies in great detail and shows the «intracluster light» that emanates from the stars in Abell 2390. These are stars that have been torn from their places due to strong gravitational interactions with other galaxies in the cluster. This intra-cluster light can also help to reveal the distribution of dark matter.
Of particular interest to scientists studying dark matter will be the background arcs and distorted swirls in this image. They represent light from distant galaxies that is gravitationally «lensing» or deformed by dark matter located between the galaxies themselves and «Euclid». This distortion of distant galaxies can be seen in the lower part of the image.
The new series of photos also includes a view of another galaxy cluster, Abell 2764, located about 1 billion light-years from Earth in a dense region of space.
Stars within the Milky Way that are much closer to the telescope are also visible, and because of their relative proximity, they appear incredibly bright. This particular star, V*BP-Phoenicis, is in fact so bright in the night sky that it can almost be seen with the naked eye.
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