Study of the “dark side” of the Universe reveals 1st piece of unprecedented map

The powerful Euclid telescope captured millions of stars and galaxies in a dazzling new mosaic — and it represents just the first piece of a huge puzzle that the observatory was designed to solve.

The European Space Agency (ESA) mission, launched in July 2023, will create the largest and most accurate 3D map of the cosmos ever made with the aim of helping 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. However, this piece represents just a small fraction of the vast survey Euclid will undertake of the sky in the future, measuring the shape, distance and movement 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 a 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 ESA, in a press release. .

One of Euclid’s main goals is to observe dark matter and dark energy. Although dark matter has never been detected, it is believed to make up 85% of the total matter in the Universe. Meanwhile, dark energy is a mysterious force believed to play a role in the accelerating expansion of the Universe.

Astronomers hope the telescope’s observations of millions of galaxies will reveal hidden forces that provide structure to the Universe and drive its mysterious rate of acceleration.

A new perspective on the cosmos

Euclid’s wide perspective can record data from a part of the sky 100 times larger than the camera on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope can capture. However, the telescope’s sensitive cameras can also capture intricate details of many celestial objects at the same time.

For example, the delicate structure of a spiral galaxy in the Abell 3381 cluster, located 470 million light-years away, can be seen in the mosaic, as can pale blue clouds among the stars of our Milky Way galaxy.

These “galactic cirrus” clouds, so called because they resemble cirrus clouds on Earth, are a mixture of gas and dust — and Euclid can capture their faint luminosity with its visible light camera.

The first images from Euclid were released in November 2023, but the telescope began observing the sky regularly in February. So far, the observatory has completed 12% of its research.

“We have already seen beautiful high-resolution images of individual objects and groups of Euclid objects. This new record finally gives us a glimpse of the enormity of the area of ​​sky that Euclid will cover, allowing us to make detailed measurements of billions of galaxies,” said Jason Rhodes, observational cosmologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. , in a statement. Rhodes is the U.S. science lead for Euclid and principal investigator for NASA’s dark energy science team for Euclid.

Seeking evidence of the invisible

In the 1920s, astronomers Georges Lemaître and Edwin Hubble discovered that the Universe has been expanding since its birth 13.8 billion years ago.

However, research beginning in the 1990s showed that something triggered an acceleration in magnification about 6 billion years ago, and the cause of this phenomenon remains a mystery.

Uncovering the true nature of dark energy and dark matter could help astronomers understand what the Universe is made of, how its expansion has changed over time, and whether there is more to understand about gravity than meets the eye.

These elements are also believed to play a role in the distribution and movement of objects, such as galaxies and stars, through the cosmos.

Euclid was designed to observe billions of galaxies spanning 10 billion light years, revealing how matter may have been stretched and pulled apart by dark energy over time.

These observations will allow the tool to visualize how the Universe has evolved over the last 10 billion years.

During its observations, the telescope will catalog 1.5 billion galaxies and the stars within them, collecting a veritable treasure trove of data for astronomers that will include the mass of each system and the number of celestial bodies formed per year.

The first Euclid images are a promising glimpse of the broader map that will be revealed in the future.

“What really strikes me about these new images is the enormous variation in physical scale,” said Mike Seiffert, project scientist at JPL for NASA’s Euclid contribution, in a statement.

“The images capture details, from star clusters near an individual galaxy to some of the largest structures in the Universe. We are starting to see the first hints of what the full Euclid data will look like once the main research is complete.”

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This content was originally published in Study of the “dark side” of the Universe reveals 1st piece of unprecedented map on the CNN Brasil website.

Source: CNN Brasil