The first portion of what will be the largest 3D map of the universe ever made has been unveiled. It brilliantly displays 14 million galaxies and the tens of millions of stars in our own Milky Way.

An area of the mosaic released by ESA’s Euclid space telescope; Photo: ESA : Euclid : Euclid Consortium : NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi
An area of the mosaic released by ESA’s Euclid space telescope; Photo: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi

Originally launched in 2023 and organized by the European Space Agency (ESA) with contributions from NASA, the Euclid mission sent snapshots in November 2023 and May 2024. The mission’s goal was to enable the creation of a 3D map of the universe in time and space, which could allow us to learn more about its evolution and the mysterious phenomena of dark energy and dark matter.

The newly released data is a mosaic of 208 gigapixels and covers 1% of the final map. The completed map will include six years of observations and is expected to capture billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light years.

According to Professor Mat Page of the Mullard space science laboratory at University College London (UCL), who is also the lead for Euclid’s VIS (visible instrument) camera, this is the first time an image of such a large area of space has been rendered at such a high resolution.

Images released by Esa highlight the area of the sky covered by the new mosaic, together with the mosaic itself and zoomed-in views within it. Regions of light blue in the mosaic were galactic cirrus clouds between stars and the Milky Way, which are composed of gas and dust that reflect optical light and allow them to be visible on the mission’s extremely sensitive visible light camera.

Spiral galaxy ESO 364-G036 appears in detail; Photo: ESA : Euclid : Euclid Consortium : NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi
Spiral galaxy ESO 364-G036 appears in detail; Photo: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi.

If viewers of the mosaic continue to zoom, they will also be treated to more detailed views, including the spiral galaxy NGC 2188 and the galaxy cluster Abell 3381.

“Even the zoomed-in images don’t show the full resolution of Euclid’s spectacular VIS camera,” he stated. “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.”

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