Release of observations and data from the Euclid space telescope

Results provide a glimpse of the telescope’s power and performance.

Early Release Observations

The Euclid Consortium have released early scientific papers based on observations made by the Euclid telescope. A number of targets have been observed and analysed by collaborators during this Early Release Observations (ERO) phase, giving a glimpse of the unprecedented power of this telescope, which is meant to provide the most precise map of our Universe over time.

Some of the science includes: new-born free-floating planet candidate, newly identified extragalactic star clusters, new low-mass dwarf galaxies in a nearby cluster of galaxies, and the discovery of very distant bright galaxies (seen during the first billion years of the Universe).

In addition to these first and promising scientific results, the Consortium also publishes the mission’s reference papers that confirm the outstanding performance of Euclid.

The Euclid Consortium

The Euclid Consortium comprises of more than 2600 members, including over 1000 researchers from more than 300 laboratories in 18 countries. The Consortium has been planning, building, and is currently operating the Euclid space telescope mission in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA).

Astronomers and developers from the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Astronomy are playing a leading role in work associated with the Euclid satellite, including defining its scientific goals, designing its observations, developing its data processing methods, hosting the UK’s Euclid Science Data Centre, and carrying out the scientific analysis.

The telescope, launched on 1 July 2023, aims to map the extragalactic sky over a period of six years, providing unique data that can offer new insights into dark energy and dark matter.

Professor Andy Taylor from the University of Edinburgh, who leads the UK’s Euclid data analysis team and the Euclid gravitational lensing data analysis, said:

These new images from Euclid are absolutely stunning. They demonstrate both the image quality and the huge area of the sky seen by Euclid in each observation. The image of the galaxy cluster, Abell 2390, is a spectacular demonstration of Euclid’s ability to carry out the highest quality gravitational lensing survey we had hoped for. Each of the images are rich in information which we are only starting to mine. This is just a taster of what Euclid will do.

Professor Annette Ferguson from the University of Edinburgh, who is a member of the Local Universe ERO science team, said:

It has been incredibly exciting for me and my team to work with these first images from Euclid. The level of detail is truly astonishing, and the data has already yielded remarkable insights into some of the nearest galaxies beyond the Milky Way.

Reference papers

The first suite of Euclid publications describe the Euclid mission, its scientific instruments and its performance based on observations made by Euclid. Five of the papers will serve as key reference throughout the mission and beyond, while the other ten showcase the research conducted with the Early Release Observations data.