News Archive 2024

 

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Euclid's Great Cosmic Atlas 15-Oct-2024
Zoom into the first page of ESA Euclid’s great cosmic atlas
On 15 October 2024, ESA's Euclid space mission reveals the first piece of its great map of the Universe, showing millions of stars and galaxies.
This first chunk of the map, which is a huge mosaic of 208 gigapixels, contains 260 observations made between 25 March and 8 April 2024. In just two weeks, Euclid covered 132 square degrees of the Southern Sky in pristine detail, more than 500 times the area of the full Moon.

Further details on ESA's Science & Exploration portal.
Access the video

Weak gravitational lensing 11-Sep-2024
Weak gravitational lensing: how Euclid maps dark matter
By making use of Euclid's flagship simulation, this video illustrates how dark-matter filaments subtly alter the shape of galaxies. Light travelling to us from vastly distant galaxies is bent and distorted by concentrations of matter along its way. The effect is called gravitational lensing because matter (both "normal" and dark matter) acts as a kind of magnifying glass.
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Euclid Galaxy Zoo 01-Aug-2024
Euclid Galaxy Zoo – help us classify the shapes of galaxies
Thanks to a new Galaxy Zoo citizen science project launched today, you can help identify the shapes of thousands of galaxies in images taken by ESA’s Euclid space telescope. These classifications will help scientists answer questions about how the shapes of galaxies have changed over time, and what caused these changes and why.
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Euclid satellite 30-May-2024
New de-icing operation begins
After the successful ice decontamination procedure performed in March, ESA's Euclid operation team, along with partners in science and industry, has been continuously monitoring the health of Euclid's science instrumentation. As expected, water ice remains inside the cavity where the instruments are hosted.
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Euclid's First Science 23-May-2024
ESA's Euclid celebrates first science with sparkling cosmic views
Today, ESA's Euclid space mission releases five unprecedented new views of the Universe. The never-before-seen images demonstrate Euclid's ability to unravel the secrets of the cosmos and enable scientists to hunt for rogue planets, use lensed galaxies to study mysterious matter, and explore the evolution of the Universe.
The new images are part of Euclid's Early Release Observations. They accompany the mission's first scientific data, also made public today, and 10 forthcoming science papers. The treasure trove comes less than a year after the space telescope's launch, and roughly six months after it returned its first full-colour images of the cosmos.
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Space Foundation Award 09-Apr-2024:
Euclid mission team honoured with Space Foundation Award
The Euclid mission team was awarded this year's Space Achievement Award by the Space Foundation, a non-profit organisation founded in 1983 to foster collaboration across the global space community. ESA Director General, Josef Aschbacher (centre), and ESA Director of Science, Carole Mundell (right), collected the prize at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, USA

Further details on ESA's Space Science portal.
An image gallery of the event can be accessed here (source: Space Foundation)

Euclid's sight restored 26-Mar-2024
Euclid's sight restored
A newly devised procedure to de-ice Euclid's optics has performed significantly better than hoped. Light coming in to the visible 'VIS' instrument from distant stars was gradually decreasing due to small amounts of water ice building up on its optics. Mission teams spent months devising a procedure to heat up individual mirrors in the instrument's complex optical system, without interfering with the finely tuned mission's calibration or potentially causing further contamination. After the very first mirror was warmed by just 34 degrees, Euclid's sight was restored.
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Euclid starts de-icing 19-Mar-2024
Operations begin to de-ice Euclid's vision
A few layers of water ice – the width of a strand of DNA – are starting to impact Euclid's vision. After months of research, Euclid teams across Europe are now testing a newly designed procedure to de-ice the mission's optics.

Update 20 March: First results confirm successful operations Euclid's sharp vision is restored. The initial analysis of Euclid's data validates the de-icing approach devised by the team. A more in-depth analysis of the results is ongoing and an update will follow in the coming days.
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Dark Universe Survey 14-Feb-2024
Ready, set, go! Euclid begins its dark Universe survey
Today, ESA's space telescope Euclid begins its survey of the dark Universe. Over the next six years, Euclid will observe billions of galaxies across 10 billion years of cosmic history. Learn how the team prepared Euclid in the months after launch for this gigantic cosmic quest.
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Astro Awards 2024 14-Jan-2024
Congratulations to ESA's Euclid team for the recognition they received at the Astro Awards 2024!
On January 14, 2024 at the Paramount Theatre, Austin, Texas, the Everyday Astronaut team hosted their first in-person event and awards show. Their mission, to honor and celebrate the revolutionary humans behind the hardware and missions by inviting them to accept an award IN REAL LIFE! And Euclid was there! Watch the video (from minute 45)
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