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In one of my earlier blogs, we spoke about the James Webb Space Telescope and how it is changing our understanding of the universe. If you think the JWST was cool, check this out ? The Euclid Space Observatory.
Launched on the first of July, 2023, this telescope had a mission — to map the universe. This educational marvel was released by the European Space Agency (ESA), from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Researchers created it to map at least one-third of the cosmos, capturing data up to 10 billion light-years away. In simple terms, the purpose of making the space observatory was to map the geometry of space.
Euclid is set out to answer the mind-boggling question of dark energy. As mentioned in earlier blogs, dark energy can be defined as the reason for the expansion of the universe. As we can’t directly see dark energy, Euclid is here to map it out using new innovations like gravitational lensing and infrared cameras.
Last year in October, the first page of the cosmic chart was released, which contained 208 gigapixels of data with billions, that’s right, not millions but billions of galaxies with precise details. Around 14 billion galaxies with tens of millions of stars were snapped.
To obtain this information, Euclid studies the cosmos using a spectrometer, which measures the composition and movements of the chosen body. This also allows it to capture data from the initial states of the universe (remember the theory of relativity), making it possible to answer major unsolved questions about the universe.
Just like JWST, Euclid is also present in the Lagrange point (Go back to when we discussed the Lagrange point), which is only 1.5 million miles away from Earth. This is a super comfortable point for telescopes like these to chill and do their work efficiently?.
Along with mapping dark energy, it also has the crucial role of locating dark matter. As dark matter is not visible to the naked eye, or many telescopes??, the space observatory identifies light bending due to gravity (gravitational lensing) to try and pinpoint the location of this unique matter.
With the entrance of the Euclid Space Observatory, this is the beginning of a new era of revolutionary discoveries. With the end of Euclid’s six-year exploration, we will likely have data mapping one-third of the entire universe, focusing on the deeper ends of the universe. Similarly to the JWST, Euclid reminds us of the unknown waiting to be studied in the far reaches of the cosmic world beyond.