The Euclid space telescope, launched July 1 on a mission to shed more light on elusive dark matter and dark energy, has reached its destination orbit and on Monday its European operators revealed its first test images.
The star-filled snapshots were taken during the space telescope's commissioning -- a phase during which its powerful instruments are finely calibrated -- and therefore not representative of its full potential.
But the European Space Agency (ESA) says the tests already show it will be capable of fulfilling its massive mission.
"After more than 11 years of designing and developing Euclid, it's exhilarating and enormously emotional to see these first images," Euclid project manager Giuseppe Racca in a statement.
After blasting off from Florida, the satellite has traveled about one million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from Earth to its observational orbit.
From there, Euclid will chart the largest-ever map of the universe, encompassing up to two billion galaxies across more than a third of the sky.
By capturing light that has taken 10 billion years to reach Earth's vicinity, the map will also offer a new view of the 13.8-billion-year-old universe's history.
Its visible light camera will let it measure the shape of galaxies, while its near-infrared spectrometer and photometer -- developed with the help of NASA -- will allow it to measure how far away they are.
But when the instruments were switched on, researchers were spooked by "an unexpected pattern of light contaminating the images," the ESA said.
An investigation led researchers to believe that "some sunlight was creeping into the spacecraft, probably through a tiny gap," but that it was only detected when Euclid was oriented in certain ways.
"By avoiding certain angles," ESA said, Euclid's imaging device "will be able to fulfill its mission."
Scientists hope to use information gathered to address what Racca previously called a "cosmic embarrassment": that 95 percent of the universe remains unknown to humanity.
Around 70 percent is thought to be made of dark energy, the name given to the unknown force that is causing the universe to expand at an accelerated rate.
And 25 percent is believed to be dark matter, thought to bind the universe together and make up around 80 percent of its mass.
The telescope's scientific operations are due to begin in October.
© 2023 AFP
6 Comments
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Mikawa
Great Science.
1glenn
The article says that Euclid will be able to see 2 billion galaxies. Our own galaxy is said to have about 100 billion stars. If each of the 2 billion galaxies has 100 billion stars, that is 2 X 10 to the 18th power of stars. By comparison, the number of insects on Earth is said to be more than 1 X 10 to the 19th power.
Numbers are a funny thing. We can write them down, but that doesn't mean we can visualize them.
So, my question, how is a telescope which observes light in the visual spectrum supposed to see dark matter, which by definition is not visible to us? Is it possible that all of the dark matter theorized to exist is hiding where we can't see anything, inside black holes in space?
garymalmgren
Numbers are a funny thing. We can write them down, but that doesn't mean we can visualize them.
I agree but.....
In the series "Cosmos", Carl Sagan stood on a beach with a hand full of sand.
He said, "There are 10,000 grains of sand in my hand. There are more stars in the universe than all of the sand on all of the beaches on Earth".
Pretty good effort at a visualization, don't you think?
RE: And 25 percent is believed to be dark matter, thought to bind the universe together and make up around 80 percent of its mass.
We can't see or detect 80% of the mass of the universe. WOW!!!!!
Gary
餓死鬼
Amazing.
I wonder how many of the stars it sees aren't even there anymore, like seeing ghosts of an earlier universe.
starpunk
It all shows just how trivial out daily Earthly affairs truly are. And our knowledge just keeps expanding, in fact it's only started. Hubble, James Webb, and Euclid! Wow.
餓死鬼
Indeed. When this planet goes (and if we're somehow still on it then) the Universe won't even miss a beat, because that would just be a "Tuesday before breakfast" in the cosmic scheme of things.