Mission to study the ‘dark side’ of the universe just revealed the first piece of unprecedented map
The powerful Euclid telescope has captured millions of stars and galaxies in a dazzling new mosaic — and it represents just the first piece of a massive puzzle the observatory has been designed to solve.

The European Space Agency mission, launched in July 2023, will create the largest and most accurate 3D map of the cosmos yet to help answer enduring questions about the "dark side" of the universe.

Scientists assembled the first piece of the map, which includes 208 gigapixels, from 260 observations made between March 25 and April 8. But it accounts for a tiny fraction of the broad survey that Euclid will make of the sky in the future, measuring the shape, distance and motion of billions of galaxies.
The mosaic, which includes about 100 million stars and galaxies, made its debut on October 15 at the International Astronautical Congress in Milan, Italy.

"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," said Valeria Pettorino, Euclid project scientist at the ESA, in a statement.

One of Euclid’s primary goals is to observe dark matter and dark energy. While dark matter has never been detected, согласование информационной вывески на фасаде здания it is believed to make up 85% of the total matter in the universe. Meanwhile, dark energy is a mysterious force thought to play a role in the accelerating expansion of the universe.