Euclid space telescope will produce the largest map of the universe ever

What conscionable happened? The European Space Agency has published a snippet of a mosaic of nan nighttime entity captured by nan Euclid abstraction telescope. The image consists of 260 observations made betwixt March 25 and April 8, 2024, and covers 132 quadrate degrees of nan confederate sky. That's much than 500 times nan area of nan afloat Moon, yet represents conscionable 1 percent of nan study Euclid is expected to seizure complete its six-year mission.

Euclid launched from Florida's Cape Canaveral connected July 1, 2023, and sent backmost its first test photos conscionable 1 period later. The scope is equipped pinch a 600-megapixel camera tasked pinch mapping much than a 3rd of nan entity – retired to 10 cardinal light-years – complete nan coming years to create nan largest 3D cosmic representation ever.

The 1 percent snippet published by nan ESA contains a mind-boggling 100 cardinal stars and galaxies, and really puts into position nan sheer enormity of nan sky. It weighs successful astatine a whopping 208 gigapixels. At 36 times zoom, we tin spot nan halfway of a postulation cluster known arsenic Abell 3381, which is located 470 cardinal light-years from Earth.

Zooming to 150x brings america successful moreover closer, but nan existent beauty comes astatine 600x zoom wherever nan intricate building of nan spiral postulation cluster is connected afloat display. At 600x, we are seeing conscionable 0.0003 percent of nan 208 gigapixel image.

The ESA said nan latest merchandise is conscionable a sensation of what is to travel from Euclid. In March 2025, nan abstraction agency plans to merchandise 53 quadrate degrees of nan survey, which will see a preview of nan Euclid Deep Field areas. The deep survey, which will relationship for 10 percent of nan telescope's full study time, will impact repeated observations of 3 mini patches successful nan sky.

Until nan ESA releases much data, nan highest solution image of nan mosaic presently disposable is 11K x 11K, and is disposable to drawback complete connected nan ESA's website.