Today (November 7), we will be able to see the universe in full color through the eyes of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid telescope for the first time.
Euclid Mission scientists are meeting in Darmstadt, Germany, to discuss the first five full-color images of the distant universe from the telescope. You can watch Tuesday’s reveal live at 8:15 a.m. EDT (1315 GMT) here on Space.com, with permission From the European Space Agency. . In addition to being of scientific value, the images are also expected to be cosmic eye candy.
It was launched in July On a six-year mission to study the universe, Euclid is now studying the dark side of the universe from a location about 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth — the same cosmic adaptation that NASA has. James Webb Space Telescope.
Related: Euclid’s “dark universe” telescope faces some setbacks during operation
Euclid was commissioned to build an innovative three-dimensional map of the dark universe by plotting the shapes and distributions of billions of galaxies and star clusters up to 10 billion light-years across, primarily in search of clues about the elusive universe. Dark matter And Dark energy.
To achieve this goal, the telescope is equipped to capture enough clear images of large areas of the sky at visible and infrared wavelengths to fill a million DVDs. To explore the dark universe, he will observe Euclid Weak gravitational lensing, a cosmic phenomenon caused by the alignment of galaxies or clumps of matter, allowing foreground galaxies to act like a giant magnifying glass to objects behind them. Light from background sources is distorted and even doubled on its way to Earth, so that we see their surreal illusions twisted around lenticular galaxies.
Since visible matter makes up only 10% or so of the total mass of most galaxy clusters, scientists suspect that invisible dark matter particles are responsible for much of this lensing. So, studying galaxy clusters can shed light on the behavior and nature of dark matter, but those images need to be super sharp to be able to focus on the fuzzy lensed images around galaxies.
Euclid gave humanity a taste of its capabilities at the end of July, when it returned to its homeland Two pictures Dotted with countless stars and dotted with points of light, they are truly distant galaxies.
There is no doubt that the latest photos will be equally charming. It will also reassure scientists that the telescope’s instruments are working as expected.
“The mission is almost ready to start collecting data for six years,” said Roland Vavrek, deputy project scientist for Euclid, who has been involved with the mission since 2013, in a video posted on Friday (Nov. 3).
Update 11/6: The live stream will go live starting at 8:15 AM ET, not 9:15 AM ET.
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