ESAThe Euclid mission identified 380,000 galaxies of varying shapes and sizesESA
The European Space Agency (ESA) has released the first data from the Euclid mission, including a classification of more than 380,000 galaxies of various shapes and sizes. The data also includes 500 candidates for gravitational lenses, a type of distortion in the trajectory of light caused by the gravity of objects with a very high mass. The new images suggest that galaxies may have formed and evolved from filaments of ordinary matter and dark matter. The first catalogue represents just 0.4% of the total number of galaxies with a similar resolution as expected to be recorded by the mission. Launched in July 2023 with the objective of learning more about dark energy and dark matter by precisely measuring the rate at which the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, Euclid began routine observations on February 14, 2024. By March 2025, the mission had observed 14% of the total predicted area. By the time it is completed, which should be in 2030, it is expected to have captured images of more than 1.5 billion galaxies (ESA, March 19).
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