With Euclid's First Dazzling Images, Webb Finds a Worthy Rival in Deep Space

Earlier this morning, ESA released the Euclid space telescope’s first scientific images, offering a glimpse into its mission to explore the “dark universe”—the mysterious 95% of the cosmos made up of dark matter and dark energy.

Advertisement The five images were chosen for their scientific value and public appeal, as the ESA team naturally wants to debut the telescope’s capabilities with a bang.

For almost 14 billion years, the universe has seen phases of brightness and darkness. Its accelerating expansion, driven by the enigmatic “dark energy,” is a puzzle that the Euclid mission aims to solve. Euclid will also probe dark matter, an invisible substance only detectable by its gravitational effects, such as bending light from distant sources—a process known as gravitational lensing.

Related article: You can see the telescope’s first images in the following slides and on the ESA website. Final fine-tuning of Euclid is now taking place and routine scientific observations are expected to begin in early 2024.

Based on reporting by gizmodo.com.