4 ms·

Not sure I'm understanding how to match the images here against Euclid's stated purpose "to investigate how dark matter and dark energy have made our Universe l

• mkesper 3y ago
  These are first demonstration images. Euclid had a hard start but now it's ready to be used.
• venice_benice 3y ago
  Euclid's website has some nice explainers­ – for example, https://www.euclid-ec.org/public/core-science https://www.euclid-ec.org/public/core-science – which mentions using two methods: - “weak gravitational lensing” with the visible light instrument (which has higher resolution than the IR one) to measure very precisely the shapes of galaxies, to enable a statistical study of distortions in their shapes, caused by weak lensing due to dark matter (and regular matter which they can observe “directly”) - “galaxy clustering” with the near IR instrument to calculate distances to the galaxies (via their redshift) which they can use to map out 3D distribution of galaxies and compare to simulations for example (there is a nice figure on this page: https://www.euclid-ec.org/euclid-core-science https://www.euclid-ec.org/euclid-core-science showing a few surveys and simulations) There is more information on their blog here as well: https://www.euclid-ec.org/blog https://www.euclid-ec.org/blog The images here are simply first light images (i doubt the horsehead nebula or globular clusters are part of the core science of Euclid); more images and spectra will be taken in the coming years to do the actual core science (which will require a lot more data)