PARIS: A mind-boggling number of shining galaxies, a purple and orange star nursery and a spiral galaxy similar to our Milky Way: new images were revealed from Europe’s Euclid space telescope on Thursday.

It is the second set of images released by the European Space Agency since Euclid launched last year on the first-ever mission to investigate the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

Scientific results were also published for the first time in the six-year mission, which aims to use its wide view to chart two billion galaxies across a third of the sky.

Star nursery

Euclid also captured the deepest-ever image of the Messier 78, a nursery where stars are born 1,300 light years from Earth in the Orion constellation. Stars are still in the process of forming in the bluish centre of the image. After gestating for millions of years, they emerge from the purple and orange clouds at the bottom of the image. Laureijs emphasised that “only Euclid can show this in one shot.”

Published in Dawn, May 24th, 2024