The European Space Agency unveils the first page of Euclid’s cosmic atlas, with its hundred million stars and galaxies

By zooming in very deeply, one can see the complex structure of a spiral galaxy or two galaxies interacting with each other.

One hundred million stars and galaxies at a single glance: the European Space Agency (ESA) unveiled, on Tuesday October 15, a first part of the map of the universe produced by the Euclid telescope to unravel the mystery dark matter.

On the narrow band of deep black, dotted with sparkling points, vaporous blue clouds stretch: “galactic cirrus”, mixture of dust and gas “from which new stars will form”, explains Bruno Altieri, ESA scientist in charge of the Euclid archive, to AFP. By zooming in very deeply, one can see the complex structure of a spiral galaxy or two galaxies interacting with each other.

“In this image alone, there are already tens of millions of galaxies, thanks to which we will be able to produce statistics on where certain types of galaxies are found in relation to others, how they evolve over time, why they have not formed stars for several billion years…”explains Bruno Altieri.

This picture “breathtaking” is the first piece (only 1%) of a map that, in six years, “will reveal more than a third of the sky”, underlines Valeria Pettorino, Euclid project scientist at ESA in a press release published on Wednesday. A 208 gigapixel mosaic, it was produced from 260 observations made by Euclid in just two weeks, between March 25 and April 8.