University of Edinburgh’s Space Telescope Reveals First Fragment of Cosmic Map

The Euclid space telescope – orbiting one million miles from Earth – has produced a piece of its cosmic map containing some 14 million galaxies and tens of millions of stars in our own Milky Way.

Despite its vast scale, the section accounts for just one per cent of the full map that Euclid will produce during its six-year mission.

The mission – launched in July 2023 – is led by the European Space Agency and a consortium of more than 2,000 scientists from 16 countries, including researchers from the University.

Map section
The newly released map section – 208 gigapixels in size – is composed of 260 observations made by Euclid’s powerful cameras in Spring of this year.

Researchers will use data gathered by the mission to shed light on two of the biggest mysteries in the Universe: dark matter and dark energy.

Dark matter – which does not reflect or emit light – is thought to make up around 80 per cent of all the mass in the Universe and binds galaxies together.

Dark energy is a mysterious phenomenon that is pushing galaxies away from each other and causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate. Unlike gravity, which draws objects together, dark energy appears to drive cosmic objects apart at an increasingly rapid rate, experts say.

Edinburgh expertise
Astronomers from the School of Physics and Astronomy are leading on two of the Euclid mission’s key research areas, including analysis of data relating to so-called gravitational lensing.

The phenomenon – which occurs when a galaxy causes the path of light to bend around it – produces tiny changes in the images of galaxies, which can be used to map the distribution of dark matter in space and how it has evolved over time.

Edinburgh also hosts Euclid’s UK Science Data Centre, which is processing huge amounts of data generated throughout the mission for scientists to analyse worldwide.

This map of a large chunk of the sky is amazing, and shows Euclid’s unique capacity to make high-resolution images of the Universe over such large areas. This is essential for Euclid’s mission to understand dark matter and dark energy, but also provides astronomy, and the public, with an unprecedented clear view of the Universe.

Professor Andy Taylor
School of Physics and Astronomy