Euclid, the scientific satellite, reveals the first deep view into the cosmos, spanning an area of 500 full moons in the sky.

Dive into the first page of Euclid’s great cosmic atlas

This image shows an area of the mosaic released by ESA’s Euclid space telescope on 15 October 2024. The area is zoomed in 150 times compared to the large mosaic. On the left of the image, Euclid captured two galaxies (called ESO 364-G035 and G036) interacting with each other, 420 million light-years from us. On the right of the image, galaxy cluster Abell 3381 is visible, 678 million light-years away from us. © ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

From the logbook of a science communicator.

A couple of years ago, during a meeting, I had the opportunity to personally meet and interview Giuseppe Racca, Euclid project manager at the European Space Agency (ESA).

Euclid is a space satellite, a European mission built and operated by the ESA, with contributions from NASA, consisting of more than 2000 scientists from 300 institutes in 15 European countries, the USA, Canada and Japan.

The satellite was launched in July 2023 and started its routine science observations on 14 February 2024.

In November 2023 and May 2024, the world got its first glimpses of the quality of Euclid’s images and today (15 October 2024) is a milestone day, because the space mission reveals the first piece of its great map of the Universe, showing millions of stars and galaxies.

The captured strip across the sky, can be see below, demonstrates the stunning data quality at all levels, from wide-angle views of the Universe to the details of structures inside individual galaxies.