On Monday (July 31), the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope sent its first images back to Earth. And while these seminal portraits are actually mesmerizing, additionally they confirm that the space observatory’s instruments are working in tip-top shape.
Euclid’s success thus far is admittedly exciting because, to place it simply, this machine’s purpose is to map out the dark side of our universe by analyzing billions of galaxies that reside as much as about 10 billion light-years away. Higher yet, the agency also says this ambitious map can be in “3D,” since it’ll include the element of time to point out how those realms evolved in tandem with a maturing cosmos.
“The outstanding first images obtained using Euclid’s visible and near-infrared instruments open a brand new era to observational cosmology and statistical astronomy,” Yannick Mellier, astronomer on the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris and Euclid Consortium lead, said in a press release. “They mark the start of the hunt for the very nature of dark energy.”
Euclid launched on July 1 from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Now floating about 1,000,000 miles (1.6 million km) from Earth, it joined the James Webb Space Telescope on July 28 at what’s often known as the second Lagrange point. Over the subsequent few months, scientists will proceed testing the machine until it starts officially developing its epic cosmic survey.
Related: Euclid mission: ESA’s hunt for dark matter and dark energy
We’ll get more into what a dark-universe-hunting machine means in a bit, but first, let’s discuss Euclid’s stunning, star-filled images.
The photographs you see above were taken with an instrument on Euclid called VIS, which stands for “Visible Instrument.” As its name suggests, VIS captures the universe through the a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to human eyes, wavelengths between 550 and 900 nanometers.
On the left, you possibly can see VIS’ full field of view — and on the correct, a zoomed-in version. ESA likens the range of the close-up to about one quarter the width and height of the full moon as seen from Earth.
Some highlights of VIS’ portraits include cosmic rays shooting straight across the sphere, a wealth of unmissable glittering stars, and most significantly, just a few fuzzy blobs. Those blobs, ESA explains, are galaxies Euclid will investigate further while developing a highly detailed map of our universe, dark energy and all.
“Ground-based tests don’t offer you images of galaxies or stellar clusters, but here all of them are on this one field,” Reiko Nakajima, VIS instrument scientist, said within the statement. “It is gorgeous to have a look at, and a joy to achieve this with the people we have worked along with for thus long.”
Next, we get to NISP, which stands for Euclid’s Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer. As ESA puts it, NISP has two roles. First, it could possibly image galaxies in infrared light, or light invisible to human eyes that falls between about 950 and 2020 nanometers on the electromagnetic spectrum. The James Webb Space Telescope also taps into such infrared wavelengths, which is why scientists often say it’s unveiling an invisible universe. It quite literally is.
Second, NISP can measure precisely how much light each galaxy emits — this latter bit can tell us how distant those galaxies are.
The NISP images you see above are pretty much like the VIS set in that the left side includes NISP’s full field while the correct shows a zoomed-in section.
But before reaching the NISP detector, deep space light captured by Euclid also passes through some cool filters. And that gives some pretty awesome results. These filters can do things like measure brightness at a selected infrared wavelength, which helps with NISP’s galactic distance measurements.
“Although these first test images will not be yet usable for scientific purposes, I’m pleased that the telescope and the 2 instruments at the moment are working superbly in space,” Knud Jahnke, from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg who works on Euclid’s NISP instrument, said in a press release.
And in truth, one among these filters is why NISP offered us a 3rd test image.
Besides looking like an early 2000’s computer screensaver, this image is very important because each streak represents a person light spectrum of a galaxy or star. Euclid has a tool often known as a “grism” that may mainly split cosmic light right into a full spectrum of wavelengths before sending the information to NISP.
With this process, scientists can determine how distant a certain galaxy is, as an example, in addition to what the galaxy is chemically manufactured from.
“We have seen simulated images, we have seen laboratory test images,” William Gillard, NISP instrument scientist, said within the statement. “It’s still hard for me to know these images at the moment are the actual universe. So detailed, just amazing.”
Now, in the event you’ve still been stuck on the very fact Euclid may help us understand the dark universe, here’s what meaning.
What’s next for Euclid?
Dark energy and its partner-in-crime, dark matter, constitute a few of the biggest and most fascinating inquiries to exist in astronomy today. Neither phenomena might be seen by human eyes, yet still seem like holding our universe together.
For starters, space is always expanding outward in every direction like an unpoppable balloon. However the weird thing is, this ballooning appears to be happening at speeds scientists cannot quite account for with all of the visible stuff in our universe. Thus, something else have to be acting to speed up the cosmic expansion. Scientists call that “something” dark energy.
Meanwhile, throughout the expanding universe, there appears to be some kind of glue ensuring galaxies are held in place and dictating the way in which they’re arranged. For instance, scientists calculate that intergalactic gas and stars often move around as if there’s extra gravity pulling on them. Presumably, it’s because some kind of invisible material surrounds the galaxies these objects live in (perhaps like a halo) and due to this fact exerts gravitational forces on them. That unseeable “glue” is often known as dark matter.
Dark matter and dark energy aren’t necessarily made up of 1, and even two, things. They could possibly be made up of a bunch of various components. Scientists just use these as bulk terms to explain gaps in our understanding.
All we all know of course, straight away, is that the dark universe exists.
But when Euclid’s mission of exquisitely mapping the universe over the subsequent six years or so pans out, perhaps scientists will gain some clues as to what the dark universe truly is.
It’s because, as dark matter and energy interact with things in space, laying out the distribution and evolution of those things can tell us where the dark universe suits into the story.
“I actually have full confidence that the team behind the mission will reach using Euclid to disclose a lot concerning the 95% of the universe that we currently know so little about,” ESA director, General Josef Aschbacher, said within the statement.
“After greater than 11 years of designing and developing Euclid, it’s exhilarating and enormously emotional to see these first images,” Euclid project manager, Giuseppe Racca, said within the statement. “It’s much more incredible when we predict that we see just just a few galaxies here, produced with minimum system tuning. The fully calibrated Euclid will ultimately observe billions of galaxies to create the biggest-ever 3D map of the sky.”