New Euclid images help us see hidden galaxies
ESA’s Euclid space telescope released its first batch of survey data on March 19, 2025, giving us a peek into the “dark universe.” Looking at just three small areas of sky with one week of observations, Euclid has spotted some 26 million galaxies. Some of those galaxies lie up to 10.5 billion light-years away from us. And within those deep fields, Euclid has spotted about 500 gravitational lens candidates. Larger foreground galaxies are bending the light of more distant, background galaxies, giving us a peek at these otherwise hidden islands of stars.
The Euclid mission is surveying the night sky in visible and near-infrared light of objects outside the bright Milky Way. And the goal is to achieve insights into the mysterious nature of dark matter and dark energy.
Aprajita Verma of the University of Oxford said:
This early data release showcases the amazing images that we will receive from the Euclid telescope. Even in this tiny area [less than 0.5% of the Euclid survey], Euclid has revealed millions of galaxies in exquisite detail.
Euclid’s deep fields
This first data release comes from three mosaics. These three deep fields focus on areas where we can see beyond our own Milky Way galaxy into the larger universe.
Besides the gravitational lenses, the data release includes galaxy clusters, active galactic nuclei, quasars, transient events and more. ESA’s Director of Science, Carole Mundell, said:
Euclid shows itself once again to be the ultimate discovery machine. It is surveying galaxies on the grandest scale, enabling us to explore our cosmic history and the invisible forces shaping our universe.
Insight into our universe
Humans teamed up with AI algorithms and have classified more than 380,000 of the galaxies in these images. Eventually, the complete catalog of galaxies will help astronomers understand questions such as how spiral arms form or how supermassive black holes grow.
So far, Euclid has imaged just 14% of the total survey area. Valeria Pettorino, ESA’s Euclid project scientist, said:
We will observe each deep field between 30 and 52 times over Euclid’s six year mission, each time improving the resolution of how we see those areas, and the number of objects we manage to observe. Just think of the discoveries that await us.
Bottom line: New Euclid images dive deep into our universe, unveiling millions of galaxies, along with galactic clusters and quasars and hidden galaxies revealed through gravitational lensing.
Via ESA
Via Royal Astronomical Society