Premiere of the largest 3D map of the universe

According to the European Space Agency, the first part of the giant map of space is based on 260 observations made by the probe between March 25 and April 8 of this year. The excerpt shows a portion of the southern sky, which will ultimately only make up one percent of the one-third sky graphic that will be available at the end of the mission.

In the first part of the map, you can also see millions and millions of stars from our home galaxy – the Milky Way. Although it is only a small part of the giant structure, one can see, among other things, the beginnings of the characteristic spiral structure that is said to characterize galaxies of this type. In addition to the various cosmic formations, the new probe was also able to record accumulations of gas and dust that appear blue in the images. These are called “galactic cirrus clouds” – based on the very similar cloud structures on our home planet.

About 2,000 scientists from 15 European countries in addition to the United States, Japan and Canada are participating in the project. There are two space companies from Vienna, Austria, on board, as well as research teams Tim Schrbach and Francine Marlow from the University of Innsbruck. Under the leadership of Tyrolean scientists, a total of 1,100 dwarf galaxies in the Perseus galaxy group have recently been identified based on Euclid I data, of which 630 galaxies were previously unknown.

The goal of the overall mission is to create a map of the sky that is as detailed as possible. With new information about the distortion effects caused by large masses, researchers around the world hope to learn more about dark matter and elusive dark energy.

Since the space telescope will send about 100 gigabytes of data back to Earth every day in the coming years, scientists recently asked for help from interested everyday researchers: As part of the “Galaxy Zoo” initiative, “citizen scientists” are being asked to participate in classifying the countless galaxies that… Can be found in space.

(Service – Euclid website: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Euclid; Galaxy Zoo Initiative: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/zookeeper/galaxy-zoo/)