More than 900 juta galaxies now appear in the first major data release from the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission, launched in July 2023 to map the largest three-dimensional view of the cosmos.
Bisnistoday reported that the project aims to explain dark energy and dark matter, which respectively make up about 70% and 25% of the universe. This initial release covers roughly 14% of the target sky area.
While the Hubble Space Telescope produces exceptional image resolution, it lacks the wide sky coverage achieved by Euclid. Professor Andy Taylor from the University of Edinburgh explained the technical advance of the new data.
“The technological leap brought by Euclid is the ability to maintain that high resolution while mapping a very large volume of the sky—a very large volume of the universe.”
said Taylor, as reported by The Guardian.
The new dataset captures more than 60 juta quasar candidates alongside the massive galaxy count. It also identifies roughly 15,000 potential cases of strong gravitational lensing, a phenomenon previously known in only about 1,000 instances. Albert Einstein predicted that foreground galaxy gravity would distort space-time and bend background light into bright arcs or rings.
Dark matter adds mass to these structures and intensifies the gravitational pull. Taylor said that studying these lenses may help scientists rule out competing theories about dark matter properties. Stephen Serjeant, an astronomy professor at the Open University, noted the significance of these findings.
“Through strong gravitational lensing, you can find out how dark matter clumps. This becomes an important indicator to determine the type of matter, because different types of matter can clump in very different ways,” said Serjeant.
Researchers expect total detections of strong lensing candidates to reach 170,000 by the end of the mission. Subsequent data releases are scheduled for next summer. Those files will include findings on galaxy distribution and weak gravitational lensing, which involves subtle distortions caused by foreground dark matter.
Taylor explained how scientists plan to utilize that upcoming information.
“We can use the distortion pattern to map the location of dark matter throughout the universe,” said Taylor.
What percentage of the universe consists of dark energy?
Dark energy is estimated to comprise about 70% of the universe, while dark matter accounts for roughly 25%.
How much of the total sky does the current data cover?
The initial data release covers approximately 14% of the total sky area that the Euclid mission plans to map.
When were the next batch of survey results scheduled for release?
Further data results regarding galaxy distribution and weak gravitational lensing are expected to become available next summer.
“This opens up access to high resolution from the whole sky, the whole universe,” Taylor said.