Measuring 93 billion light-years in diameter, the universe is so big that it can be overwhelming to envisage.
Despite its vast size, scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) are beginning to piece together the largest 3D map of the universe ever made.
ESA’s Euclid telescope has revealed its first breathtaking images that will form the first piece this ‘cosmic atlas’.
The ‘huge mosaic’ is made up of 208 gigapixels of image data, covering an area in the southern sky more than 500 times the area of the full moon ESA said.
Featuring some 14 million galaxies, it accounts for one per cent of the wide sky survey that Euclid will capture over six years to shed light on two of the universe’s greatest mysteries: dark energy and dark matter.
Dark matter is made up of particles that do not absorb, reflect or emit light while dark energy is believed to be pushing galaxies apart, causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.
Valeria Pettorino, Euclid project scientist at ESA, said: ‘This stunning image is the first piece of a map that in six years will reveal more than one third of the sky.
‘This is just 1% of the map, and yet it is full of a variety of sources that will help scientists discover new ways to describe the universe.’
ESA said a ‘special feature’ that can be seen in the mosaic are dim clouds in between the stars in the Milky Way which appear in light blue against the black background of space.
They are a mix of gas and dust, also called ‘galactic cirrus’ because they look like cirrus clouds, it said.
Euclid is able to see these clouds with its highly sensitive camera because they reflect optical light from the Milky Way, the scientists said.
The optical camera, called VIS, was designed and built by an international team led by researchers at University College London (UCL) while the Open University’s (OU) Centre for Electronic Imaging (CEI) helped to develop the detectors for the VIS instrument.
Dr Jesper Skottfelt, research fellow at the OU, said: ‘The Euclid mission is a major step forward in our understanding of the dark universe.
‘The images Euclid is capturing are a treasure trove of information that will help us unravel the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.’
Professor Mat Page, based at UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, who is the current lead for the VIS camera, said: ‘Before Euclid, nobody had ever made an image of such a large area of sky at such high resolution.
‘Even the zoomed in images don’t show the full resolution of Euclid’s spectacular VIS camera.
‘Before Euclid, we would never be able to see the faint cirrus clouds in the Milky Way, and pick out every star that’s illuminating them in super-high resolution.
‘And this is just a tiny fraction of the full area that Euclid is going to survey, so by the end we’ll have a real astronomical harvest of discoveries.’
Launched in July 2023, the Euclid mission aims to create a 3D map of the universe by observing two billion galaxies, which will help scientists understand its cosmic history.
Euclid will explore how the universe has expanded and how structure has formed over cosmic history, revealing more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter.
Dark matter makes up most of the mass of galaxies and galaxy clusters, and is responsible for the way galaxies are organized on grand scales.
Dark energy, meanwhile, is the mysterious influence driving the accelerated expansion of the universe.
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