The European Space Agency released photos taken by its Euclid space telescope, revealing images of a stellar nursery and distant star clusters, on Thursday.
The five images were released almost one year into the Euclid space telescope’s lifespan, which was launched on July 1, 2023, as part of a six-year mission to study cosmology and dark energy.
“Euclid is a unique, ground-breaking mission, and these are the first datasets to be made public — it’s an important milestone,” Valeria Pettorino, ESA’s Euclid Project scientist, said in a press release. “The images and associated science findings are impressively diverse in terms of the objects and distances observed. They include a variety of science applications, and yet represent a mere 24 hours of observations. They give just a hint of what Euclid can do. We are looking forward to six more years of data to come!”
The pictures include a high-resolution shot of spiral galaxy NGC 6744, which the press release says is important in studying how galaxies form.
“Scientists are using this dataset to understand how dust and gas are linked to star formation; map how different star populations are distributed throughout galaxies and where stars are currently forming; and unravel the physics behind the structure of spiral galaxies, something that is still not fully understood after decades of study,” according to the release.
Also pictured was the Dorado galaxy group, which showcases galaxies merging and “how galaxies form within halos of dark matter.”
The telescope also pictured “star-forming region” Messier 78, “a vibrant star nursery enveloped in interstellar dust.”
“Euclid peered deep into this nursery using its infrared camera, exposing hidden regions of star formation for the first time, mapping its complex filaments of gas and dust in unprecedented detail, and uncovering newly formed stars and planets,” the release said of the photo.
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The space telescope was named after Euclid, a Greek mathematician who lived in about 300 B.C. Euclid is considered one of the grandfathers of geometry, and a collection of Euclid’s theories, Elements, is considered one of the most influential scientific textbooks ever released.
The European Space Agency was formed in 1975 with a mission to help understand “Earth, its immediate space environment, our Solar System and the Universe.” It has 22 member states, and keeps its headquarters in Paris.