Europe’s new space telescope has sent back its first dazzling images – and will now begin peering into the invisible dark forces manipulating the universe.
The Euclid telescope will observe the shapes, distances and movements of billions of galaxies up to 10 billion light years away to create the largest-ever 3D map of the cosmos.
To demonstrate its potential, the European Space Agency (ESA) has released razor-sharp full-colour images that include the dramatic Horsehead Nebula, a look-alike of our own Milky Way, and a mesmerising picture of more than 100,000 distant galaxies.
Each of the images released by ESA contains over 600 million pixels, allowing scientists to look at even familiar parts of the sky in unprecedented detail.
Here are a few of the images Euclid captured in stunning detail:
A mesmerising panorama of the Horsehead Nebula, part of the Orion constellation, peers deep into the stellar nursery.
The Horsehead Nebula. Pic: ESA
One snapshot of 1,000 galaxies in the Perseus Cluster captures another 100,000 in the background, some so distant they are just pinpoints of light.
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