Mission to uncover ‘dark universe’ shares first images

A revolutionary mission to uncover the 'dark universe' has shared its first images, and they are certainly impressive.

Telescopes are pretty incredible aren't they? Recently, the James Webb Space Telescope captured stars being born 1,300 light-years from Earth, now the Euclid space telescope has achieved something equally impressive.

Well, you'd want it to be impressive to be honest as the European Space Agency's (ESA) mission is costing a whopping $1 billion, as it focuses on dark matter and dark energy. Take a look at the new images in the video below:

While they make up 95 percent of the universe, they remain very mysterious.

Prior to the unveiling of the new pictures, René Laureijs, a scientist on the project said: "We have never seen astronomical images like this before, containing so much detail.

"They are even more beautiful and sharp than we could have hoped for, showing us many previously unseen features in well-known areas of the nearby universe."

ESA

Scientist on the mission gathered in Darmstadt, Germany to reveal the stunning images, which are from various pockets of the universe.

Perhaps the most impressive images of the study so far come from the Perseus galaxy cluster and Horsehead nebula, which are captured in quite remarkable detail.

Incredibly, these shots capture 100,000 galaxies in just a single photo, showing the true power of the telescope in use.

Prof Carole Mundell, who is the director of science at the ESA, has said these latest findings and the mission as a whole will push scientific knowledge 'beyond Einstein'.

ESA

"As humans, we’ve managed to figure out how 5% of the universe works and we’ve also figured out that there’s another 95% that remains unknown to us," she said in a press release.

"We can’t travel out to the edge of the universe to investigate, but we’re bringing those images back to Earth and studying them on computers – and for only €1.4bn. I think it’s magical."

Only €1.4bn ($1.5bn)? A bargain. We'll take three.

The mission is far from over though, as Euclid will observe about eight billion galaxies over the next six years.

And as for how dark matter factors into this, well, it's a bit complicated.

ESA

The scientists will observe distant galaxies using visible light and infrared, look at how the light is distorted, and this will give them crucial information about the distribution of dark matter and dark energy - somehow.

Prof Mark Cropper of University College London, who led the design process on the camera, tried to explain it for us normies.

He said: "You do it like toast in a toast rack. First you look at the distortion of the nearby galaxies and work out the dark matter in the first slice of toast.

"Then you go further back to the next slice – further and further away in the universe and back in time."

Crystal clear, Prof Cropper.