The Euclide space telescope captures 26 million galaxies during the first drop of data

Extraordinary images of the Euclid space telescope captured 26 million galaxies, some up to 10.5 billion light years.

Euclid was launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) in July 2023 and returned its first images In November of the same year. During a six -year mission, he will imagine about a third of the sky, building the most detailed 3D map of the Cosmos ever created. Once finished, this survey will help to light how dark matter And dark energy behaves on cosmic scales.

ESA is now out The first large -scale data of this missionStarting with three “deep fields” – areas where the telescope will say more in detail than in the rest of its survey area. These three spots represent only 63 square degrees of sky, an area equivalent to that covered by full moon 300 times more. In the coming years, Euclid will pass over these regions between 30 and 52 times, strengthening an increasingly detailed image.

Will Percival At the University of Waterloo in Canada, the current batch of images represents less than half a cent of what the Euclide will bring together during the mission, but there is already a lot for researchers with researchers. “For many individual galaxies and their properties, there are so many science that you can do, and it is because no one has made a spatial investigation in the nearby infrared and optics like this before,” he said. “It is not entirely of the same quality as HST (the Hubble space telescope), but it is very close, and we do not point and we shoot on individual objects – we do an investigation.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVU3PLNA72M

Researchers have already used Euclid data to find hundreds of strong gravitational lenses. These phenomena are formed when the gravity of an object in the foreground deforms the light of a distant galaxy, creating a shape of arc or even a complete ring. Previously, scientists had to track them down individually and make them point HS and collect more images. Now, astronomers can seek survey data at Euclide and find a lot at the same time, which will help collect information on the evolution of galaxies and the universe.

Using an AI model, the researchers were able to find and catalog 500 galaxies with a strong gravitational lens in this first batch of data alone, doubling the total found to date. “The statistics are phenomenal,” explains Percival. “Euclid will get 200 times this amount of data at the end.”

The data published so far represent only one week of Euclid images, but it increases to some 35 teraoctets – the equivalent of 200 days of high quality video streaming. The next batch of data, which should be published at the end of next year, will be an entire year of images covering 2000 square degrees and requiring more than 2000 teraoctes of storage space.

Looking at each galaxy manually could take over a hundred years, so AI was used to massively accelerate the process, says Mike Walmsley at the University of Toronto. “We can ask new questions in weeks rather than in years,” he says.

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