European Space Agency Showcases The Map Of The First Universe

The appearance of several galaxies in the first Euclidean map (photo: dock. ESA)

JAKARTA - Euclid, a universe explorer belonging to the European Space Agency (ESA), succeeded in making a map of the first part of the universe. This large map is exhibited at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Milan, Italy.

The images shown by the Director-General of ESA, Josef Aschbacher, and Science Director Carole Mundell, on October 15 show that this map contains millions of stars and galaxies. This piece of map consists of 208 large mosaic gigapixels.

This mosaic consists of 260 observations made within two weeks, namely from March 25 to April 8. The results of this experience only produce one percent of the area targeted by Euclidean for the next six years.

"During this survey, telescopes observed the shape, distance, and movement of billions of galaxies up to 10 billion light-years. By doing this, the telescope will create the largest 3D cosmic map ever created," ESA said through its official website.

Although only one percent, this map already includes 100 million objects in outer space, including stars in the Milky Way Galaxy and surrounding galaxies. By making this map, ESA wants to find dark matter and dark energy hidden in the universe.

"The sensitive plane's camera captures a lot of objects in great detail. By enlarging the mosaic (this image is enlarged 600 times compared to the full view), we can still clearly see the complicated structure of spiral galaxies," explained ESA.

Euclidean is designed to discover properties of dark energy and dark matter that have never been found to date. To achieve this mission, ESA includes two instruments to observe galaxies up to 10 billion light-years.

One of the instruments that Euclid carries is NASA's Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP) detector. This instrument uses a single optical system to collect two different types of data through observations of 10 square degrees per day.