Today (May 23), the ESA will release five Euclid space telescope photos. Space aficionados should be in for a treat if the preceding photographs are any indication.
"Five new portraits of our cosmos were captured during Euclid's early observations phase, each revealing amazing new science," ESA officials said.
"Euclid's ability to unravel the secrets of the cosmos is something you will not want to miss."
Euclid, a wide-angle space telescope launched on July 1, 2023, from Cape Canaveral in Florida on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, has a 600-megapixel visible-light camera, a near-infrared spectrometer, and a photometer to measure galaxies' redshifts.
Euclid's main goal is to study dark energy and dark matter, the universe's most mysterious constituents. These occurrences form the "dark universe."
Whatever factor accelerates the expansion of the universe is called dark energy. Dark matter is invisible because it doesn't interact with light. Scientists know that stars, planets, moons, and human bodies aren't "ordinary" stuff consisting of electrons, protons, and neutrons.
Dark matter can only be detected by gravity, which affects conventional matter and light. To clarify, dark matter and dark energy are not the same. Both can be made of several things, or each of one homogenous one.
Although dark energy accounts for 68% of the universe's energy and matter budget, dark matter accounts for 27%. That means the dark cosmos is 95% of the universe and what we understand is 5%.
As a "dark-universe detective" with its unique set of tools, Euclid has its work cut out for it. The space telescope's first official photographs, released on Nov. 7, 2023, after four months in space, proved its worth.
Today (May 23), the ESA will release five Euclid space telescope photos. Space aficionados should be in for a treat if the preceding photographs are any indication.