Scientists have released a new set of data from the Euclid space telescope, offering an unprecedented view of the large-scale structure of the cosmos.
The Euclid space telescope, launched by the European Space Agency (ESA), is designed to create the most detailed map of the night sky ever made, helping scientists understand the evolution of our Universe and mysterious forces like dark matter and dark energy.
Researchers at The University of Manchester have played a key role in leading the Euclid scientific mission and preparing for publication the papers in this new release. This includes a preview of Euclid's deep fields, showing the capability of the mission with less than 1% of the data. These new images showcase hundreds of thousands of galaxies in various shapes and sizes - most never seen before - highlighting their expansive arrangement within the cosmic web.
Euclid Science Coordinator, Chris Conselice, Professor of Extragalactic Astronomy at the University of Manchester, said: "The Euclid telescope and mission has exceeded our expectations and has produced a slew of new science investigating galaxies, stars, and the large-scale structure of the universe in a way that has never been done before. This release is only a very tiny fraction of the survey and it is a preview of things to come whereby Euclid will solve many of the existing problem in astronomy from the nature of the universe to the formation, the evolution of galaxies, and properties of extrasolar planets."
This first set of data released in this Quick Release 1 (Q1) covers approximately 63 square degrees of the sky - the equivalent area of more than 300 times the full Moon - making it the largest area of sky ever observed with an optical/near-infrared space telescope to such depth and resolution.
Euclid's extraordinary insights into the huge variety of shapes and the distribution of billions of galaxies are made using its visible instrument (VIS), while its near-infrared instrument (NISP) is essential for measuring their distances and masses.
Among the discoveries reported today are vast thread-like structures known as galaxy filaments that form the backbone of the cosmic web. Scientists have also identified more than 500 strong gravitational lens candidates-rare cosmic phenomena where massive galaxies bend and magnify light from more distant sources, revealing hidden details about the distribution of dark matter.
This release represents just 0.45% of Euclid's full survey. Over the course of the mission, the telescope is expected to capture more than 1.5 billion galaxies, transmitting nearly 100GB of data each day.
To make sense of this enormous dataset, scientists, including those at The University of Manchester, are using cutting-edge AI and the power of citizen science. Nearly 10,000 volunteers helped train an AI system called 'Zoobot' to classify galaxies based on their features, such as spiral arms or evidence of past collisions. Their work has resulted in the first detailed catalogue of over 380,000 galaxies-an essential resource for future discoveries.
These results are described in a series of 27 scientific publications alongside seven technical reports detailing how the data is processed by Euclid's expert teams.
The scientific papers which have not yet been through the peer-review process, but which will be submitted to the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. A preprint of the papers is available here.
Find more detailed information about the data release here.
