Euclid: The Secrets of the Dark Universe
On Europe’s newest space telescope and the mysterious universe it will investigate
The first images from a new telescope are often spectacular. By and large they show the things we’ve come to expect from space: the stars and the galaxies, the nebulae and the dust clouds. Sometimes, thanks to better optics and sensors, their visions seem a little brighter or sharper than before, or reveal things until now unseen by human eyes.
In this, the Euclid space telescope was no exception. The images scientists showed off at the start of November counted three galaxies between them, a new view of the famous Horsehead Nebula, and another of the Perseus cluster, itself holding at least a thousand galaxies. All, as expected, are images of stunning cosmic beauty.
Look more carefully, however, and Euclid’s images show something rather more mysterious. Scattered across them are the ghostly fingerprints of dark matter and dark energy, two elusive forces that bind galaxies together and drive the expansion of the universe. Like a good detective, Euclid will seek out their presence in the cosmos; tracking them in the curves of galaxies, in the shapes of clusters and in the very structure of the universe.
