(NLDO) - The European Space Agency (ESA) has just announced a magical "mosaic" created by the dark space explorer Euclid.
According to Space.com, the special image that ESA has just released is the "first page" of the cosmic atlas that Euclid - often called the "dark universe telescope" - is building.
ESA describes it as a vast cosmic mosaic, assembled from 260 observations between March 25 and April 8 this year, containing 208 gigapixels of data.
A beautiful and magical patch of sky created by the first observations of the Euclid Dark Space Telescope - Photo: ESA
Although we are looking at a tiny image, it is actually a 2D image of a region of space 500 times larger than the full moon appearing in the Earth's sky and 10 billion light years deep.
Euclid is known as the "dark universe telescope" because its six-year mission will help create the largest 3D map of the universe ever built.
Not only does this supermap help us see distant objects, it also helps scientists study the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, sometimes collectively referred to as the "dark universe."
Two galaxies named ESO 364-G035 and ESO G036 are interacting with each other in an image captured by Euclid - Photo: ESA
"This stunning image is the first piece of a map that in six years will reveal more than a third of the sky," said Dr Valeria Pettorino, Euclid Project Scientist at ESA.
He explained that what has just been published is only 1% of the map, but it already contains a wealth of different information that cosmologists can rely on to describe the things and phenomena that exist in this region of the universe.
Launched in July 2023, Euclid began making scientific observations in February this year.
This wide-angle space telescope has a 600-megapixel camera that can capture visible and near-infrared light with a spectrometer.
It allows us to measure the redshift of distant objects, which is the red color produced when light from distant celestial objects moves toward the longer (redder) wavelengths in the spectrum.
This phenomenon occurs because those objects have been running away from us at high speed, due to the expansion of the universe.
By "filming and photographing" a series of galaxies, Euclid was able to measure the effects of dark energy, a mysterious force driving the acceleration of the universe, by expanding the space between galaxies.
Source: https://nld.com.vn/kinh-vien-vong-vu-tru-toi-tiet-lo-hinh-anh-kinh-ngac-dau-tien-196241017104304094.htm
Comment (0)