This weekend saw the launch of the European Space Agency (ESA)’s Euclid mission: an area telescope which goals to uncover the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. The two.2 ton spacecraft with its 1.2 meter telescope was carried into space by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and is now on its approach to its orbit across the sun.
The mission had originally been slated to launch using a Russian Soyuz rocket from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana, but following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine cooperation between ESA and Russia was halted. So as a substitute, the telescope launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, lifting off at 12:11AM ET on Saturday July 1st.
The telescope is headed for an orbit called L2, the second Lagrange point, which is similar orbit utilized by the James Webb Space Telescope and other space telescopes. This orbit offers high stability which is especially necessary for a mission like Euclid which goals to gather extremely detailed observations of the universe.
Euclid should arrive at L2 inside 4 weeks, then conduct two months of preparations before starting science observations around the start of October.
Euclid will perform each wide and deep surveys of the universe, stitching together images to create a map of the universe to assist find out about two mysterious concepts: dark matter, which makes up around 27 percent of the whole lot which exists, and dark energy, which accounts for around 68 percent of the universe. Every atom, molecule, and piece of matter that we are able to observe makes up the tiny remaining 5 percent often called unusual or baryonic matter.
The telescope is headed for a similar orbit utilized by the James Webb Space Telescope
We all know that dark matter and dark energy must exist due to movements of galaxies and the best way that the universe expands. Nevertheless, they’re extremely difficult to review because dark matter doesn’t interact with light and dark energy is an unknown type of energy. So to seek out evidence of them, we’d like to look on a really large scale.
“If you desire to do cosmology and observe the cosmos as a complete, you want to take an enormous survey,” explained Giuseppe Racca, Euclid Project Manager at ESA in a press briefing. “And Euclid is specially designed with a really wide angle telescope to cover many of the universe that will be observed in a really short time.”
The Euclid telescope will survey 36 percent of the sky over its six yr mission, and to look at an area that giant the telescope has a really wide field of view. This refers back to the amount of the sky which will be observed through the telescope, and in Euclid’s case the sector of view is 2.5 times the scale of the moon.
Compare that to, say, the Hubble Space Telescope, which has a field of view that’s just 1/twelfth the scale of the moon. Hubble can image objects like galaxies or nebulae in great detail, but it surely would take Hubble around 1,000 years to survey a comparable area of the sky to Euclid.
We all know that dark matter and dark energy must exist due to movements of galaxies and the best way that the universe expands
And should you’re wondering why Euclid will only be surveying just over a 3rd of the sky, it’s since it is unattainable to see distant galaxies in other areas of the sky, because these distant objects are blocked by closer stars and mud inside our own galaxy.
Euclid could have two instruments: the VISible instrument or VIS, which operates within the visible light wavelength, and the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer or NISP, which operates within the near-infrared. Having each these wavelengths covered allows researchers to see galaxies that are redshifted, meaning that because they’re moving away from us the sunshine coming from them is shifted toward the red end of the spectrum.
By combining observations from each instruments, Euclid observations will be used to create a 3D map showing the distribution of the visible matter within the universe.
But dark matter isn’t visible — that’s why it’s so hard to review. It may well’t be observed directly, but its presence will be inferred by taking a look at the distribution of the matter we are able to see.
“Dark energy and dark matter reveal themselves by the very subtle changes they make to the looks of objects within the visible universe,” René Laureijs, Euclid Project Scientist, explained.
The 2 essential methods for studying dark energy and dark matter utilized by Euclid shall be weak lensing and galaxy clustering. Using two methods for examining the identical thing allows the researchers to envision their results against one another, hopefully leading to more accurate findings.
Gravitational lensing is an effect through which the gravity of very large objects like galaxies or galaxy clusters warps spacetime, acting like a magnifying glass and changing the sunshine coming from distant objects behind the foreground object.
By seeing how strong this lensing effect is, scientists can calculate the mass of the foreground object — and so they can compare this calculated mass to the mass of the visible matter within the foreground galaxy. If there’s a big difference between the calculated and observed masses, that means the presence of huge amounts of dark matter within the foreground.
The opposite effect, galaxy clustering, refers to how galaxies are distributed in three dimensions across the universe. Because the universe expands, galaxies are moving away from us, leading to redshift. Scientists can compare the actual distance to a galaxy with its redshift using a phenomenon called baryon acoustic oscillations, and this will show how briskly the universe is expanding — which is directly related to dark energy.
it’s since it is unattainable to see distant galaxies in other areas of the sky
Together, these methods should help cosmologists learn more about dark matter and dark energy than ever before. To collect the info, Euclid will take around 1 million images from 12 billion objects over the course of its mission. That ought to get us one step closer to with the ability to each detect and study these elusive phenomena, and to understanding the composition of the universe around us.
“It’s greater than an area telescope,” Laureijs said, “it’s really a dark energy detector.”