Euclid telescope: First images revealed from 'dark Universe' mission Published 5 hours ago Share please log in to view this image IMAGE SOURCE,ESA/EUCLID CONSORTIUM/NASA Image caption, Spiral galaxy IC 342 (The "Hidden Galaxy") is difficult to see because it's located on the far side of the Milky Way By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent First images revealed from 'dark Universe' mission Europe's Euclid telescope is ready to begin its quest to understand the greatest mysteries in the Universe. Exquisite imagery from the space observatory shows its capabilities to be exceptional. Over the next six years, Euclid will survey a third of the heavens to get some clues about the nature of so-called dark matter and dark energy. ADVERTISEMENT These unknown "influencers" appear to control the shape and expansion of everything that's out there. Researchers concede, however, they know virtually nothing about them, even though they probably account for 95% of the contents of the cosmos. Neither dark matter nor dark energy are directly detectable. Our only hope of gaining some understanding is to trace their subtle signals in the things we can see. This will be Euclid's job: to observe the contours, distances and motions of billions of galaxies, some of whose light has taken almost the entire age of the Universe to reach us. Somewhere in the statistics of this 3D cosmic map - the largest ever made - scientists expect to find answers. Europe to develop commercial space capsule Space telescope records baby star's first screams 'Dark explorer' telescope launches successfully Horsehead Nebula please log in to view this image IMAGE SOURCE,ESA/EUCLID CONSORTIUM/NASA The Horsehead is a great cloud of gas and dust where stars are being born. It's relatively close, just 1,300 light-years from Earth. Many telescopes have imaged this scene but none have done so with the combined width and sharpness that Euclid can achieve. please log in to view this image Euclid's survey will be the most fundamental of inquires, argued Prof Carole Mundell, the director of science at the European Space Agency (Esa). "We are human, we want to understand everything around us; whether that was as ancient people looking at the night sky and drawing constellations on our caves, or trying to understand whether the Sun would come back after the winter - we seek that knowledge and insight," she told BBC News. "We don't currently understand 95% of the Universe, a universe that is 13.8 billion years old. We're sentient beings who've been around for a tiny fraction of that time, but we could be the species that gets to figure it all out." Dark matter and dark energy are among the biggest puzzles in modern astrophysics. The former could be some as-yet-undetected particle. Astronomers infer its presence from the gravitational pull it exerts on the matter we can see. Galaxies would fly apart if it wasn't there. The latter represents a very different problem. It could be some kind of energy in the vacuum of space. Whatever it is, it appears to be working against gravity to push galaxies apart at an ever-accelerating rate. please log in to view this image Perseus Cluster please log in to view this image IMAGE SOURCE,ESA/EUCLID CONSORTIUM/NASA The Perseus Cluster is one of the most massive structures in the Universe. This image contains 1,000 galaxies from this group, but beyond are tens of thousands more galaxies, some of whose light has taken 10 billion years to reach us. please log in to view this image The €1.4bn (£1.2bn) Euclid telescope went into space in July. Since then, engineers have been fine-tuning it. There were some early worries. Initially, Euclid's optics couldn't lock on to stars to take a steady image. This required new software for the telescope's fine guidance sensor. Engineers also found some stray light was polluting pictures when the observatory was pointed in a certain way. But with these issues all now resolved, Euclid is good to go - as evidenced by the release of five sample images on Tuesday. "They are fantastic," said Prof Isobel Hook, who worked on one the teams in the 1990s that first discovered the Universe was expanding at a faster and faster pace. "I finally saw the images at full resolution on Monday, and they really blew me away. We were expecting Euclid to perform very well and it really has met all our expectations. It's a big relief and really wonderful to see," the Lancaster University astronomer enthused. please log in to view this image NGC 6397 please log in to view this image IMAGE SOURCE,ESA/EUCLID CONSORTIUM/NASA Located a mere 7,800 light-years from Earth, NGC 6397 is what's termed a globular cluster. It's an ancient grouping of stars, some of which are almost as old as the Universe itself. They are cosmic fossils that tell us about the history of galaxies such as our own Milky Way. please log in to view this image No previous space telescope has been able to combine the breadth, depth and sharpness of vision that Euclid can. The astonishing James Webb telescope, for example, has much higher resolution, but it can't cover the amount of sky that Euclid does in one shot. "This giant camera with hundreds of millions of pixels is now ready to go and survey the distant Universe and objects over a vast range of the sky - a vast volume of the sky in space and in time," said Prof Mark McCaughrean. "It's only by looking at huge numbers of galaxies that we'll be able to tease out those subtle signals for dark energy and dark matter, which is what Euclid is all about," Esa's senior scientific advisor told BBC News. please log in to view this image NGC 6822 please log in to view this image IMAGE SOURCE,ESA/EUCLID CONSORTIUM/NASA Evolved galaxies like our own Milky Way and IC 342 display beautiful spiral arms. But NGC 6822 is an example of an irregular galaxy. It doesn't have that defined shape. Many galaxies in the early Universe look like NGC 6822, although it's relatively close, just 1.6 million light-years from Earth. please log in to view this image Engineering challenge please log in to view this image IMAGE SOURCE,ESA/EUCLID CONSORTIUM/NASA No, this isn't some bizarre galaxy discovered by Euclid. The telescope had a problem locking on to a "guide star" during early testing. Until engineers could upload new software to its fine guidance sensor, the observatory was swivelling all over the sky. please log in to view this image please log in to view this image IMAGE SOURCE,TAS Artwork: Euclid has been given six years to assemble its 3D map of one-third of the sky. The telescope is special because it combines breadth, depth and sharpness of vision. It needs these qualities to be able to probe a large volume of the sky within a practical timeframe.
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Huge ring of galaxies challenges thinking on cosmos Share please log in to view this image An artist's impression highlighting the positions of the Big Ring (in blue) and Giant Arc (shown in red) in the sky. By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent Scientists at the University of Central Lancashire have discovered a gigantic, ring-shaped structure in space. It is 1.3bn light-years in diameter and appears to be roughly 15 times the size of the Moon in the night sky as seen from Earth. Named the Big Ring by the astronomers, it is made up of galaxies and galaxy clusters. They say that it is so big it challenges our understanding of the universe. It cannot be seen with the naked eye. It is really distant and identifying all the galaxies that make up the bigger structure has taken a lot of time and computing power. Such large structures should not exist according to one of the guiding principles of astronomy, called the cosmological principle. This states that all matter is spread smoothly across the Universe. Although stars, planets and galaxies are huge clumps of matter in our eyes, in the context of the size of the universe they are insignificant - and the theory is that much bigger patches of matter should not form. The Big Ring is by no means the first likely violation of the cosmological principle and so suggests that there is another, yet to be discovered, factor at play. According to Dr Robert Massey, deputy director of the Royal Astronomical Society, the evidence for a rethink of what has been a central plank of astronomy is growing. "This is the seventh large structure discovered in the universe that contradicts the idea that the cosmos is smooth on the largest scales. If these structures are real, then it's definitely food for thought for cosmologists and the accepted thinking on how the universe has evolved over time," he said. The Big Ring was identified by Alexia Lopez, a PhD student at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), who also discovered the Giant Arc - a structure spanning 3.3bn light-years of space. Asked how it felt to have made the discoveries, she said: "It's really surreal. I do have to pinch myself, because I made these discoveries accidentally, they were serendipitous discoveries. But it is a big thing and I can't believe that I'm talking about it, I don't believe that it's me "Neither of these two ultra-large structures is easy to explain in our current understanding of the universe," she said. "And their ultra-large sizes, distinctive shapes, and cosmological proximity must surely be telling us something important - but what exactly?" The giant arcs that may dwarf everything Both the Big Ring and the Giant Arc appear relatively close together, near the constellation of Bootes the Herdsman. Professor Don Pollacco, of the department of physics at the University of Warwick, said the likelihood of this occurring is vanishingly small so the two objects might be related and form an even larger structure. "So the question is how do you make such large structures? "It's incredibly hard to conceive of any mechanism that could produce these structures so instead the authors speculate that we are seeing a relic from the early universe where waves of high and low density material are 'frozen' in to extragalactic medium." There are also similarly large structures discovered by other cosmologists - such as the Sloan Great Wall, which is around 1.5 billion light-years in length, and the South Pole Wall, which stretches 1.4 billion light-years across. But the biggest single entity scientists have identified is a supercluster of galaxies called the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, which is about 10 billion light-years wide. While the Big Ring appears as an almost perfect ring on the sky, analysis by Ms Lopez suggests it has more of a coil shape - like a corkscrew - with its face aligned with Earth. "The Big Ring and the Giant Arc, both individually and together, gives us a big cosmological mystery as we work to understand the universe and its development." The findings have been presented at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in New Orleans.
