A filamentary orange veil covers a bright region of star formation. The background is dark, stippled with stars and galaxies ranging from small bright dots to starry shapes. The foreground veil spans from upper left to the bottom right and resembles … (ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi)
Beautiful new images into deep space were observed by the European Space Agency’s Euclid observatory, adding to its celestial collection.
One particularly stunning image of Messier 78 showed the vibrant star nursery enveloped in interstellar dust.
Euclid was able to capture images deep within the nursery, exposing hidden regions of star formations for the very first time.
Other images include NGC 6744 which is considered the "big brother" to the Milky Way, the cluster galaxy Abel 2764 and the Dorado galaxy group.
Thousands of stars and galaxies dot the image against a pitch-black background. Some bright stars show six diffraction spikes coming from a central light-halo. Other stars and galaxies are just tiny bright dots, like specks of paint distributed over the image. The brightest star sits in the upper left corner. In the centre of the image, the tiny bright dots are more abundant. (ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi) A filamentary orange veil covers a bright region of star formation. The background is dark, stippled with stars and galaxies ranging from small bright dots to starry shapes. The foreground veil spans from upper left to the bottom right and resembles a seahorse. Bright stars light up the ‘eye’ and ‘chest’ regions of the seahorse with purple light. Within the tail, three bright spots sit in a traffic-light like formation. (ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi) A spiral galaxy against a dark background speckled with bright dots. The clockwise spiral has many arms, not fully distinguishable from one another, extending out from a bright central spot. There is a thin cloudy structure right above the galaxy, in the outskirts of its furthest reaching arm. In the bottom left of the image two bright dots are surrounded by a halo of light. (ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi) A starry sky against a dark background. One star is big and bright and sits in the bottom of the image. In the upper right corner galaxies clump together. They look like small bright spheres and ellipsoids. Throughout the image, tiny bright dots and a handful of glowing spheres are distributed evenly. (ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi) A starry sky against a black background with three big bright glowing structures. The two biggest, on the centre and centre-right of the image, have very bright centres with large spherical haloes surrounding them. The outskirts of these haloes seem to touch each other. A third glowing structure is present in the bottom left, and looks like a small ellipsoid version of the other two. Finally, a thin elongated bright ellipse sits in the upper left corner. (ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi) An oval-shaped map of our Milky Way. A bright band spans from left to right. This bright band is interrupted by darker cloudlike structures. On top of the oval near the upper and bottom parts are big patches of blue and three small patches of yellow. These show where Euclid is making its observations. Throughout the image are white markers with the names of the objects observed during Euclid’s early observation campaign. (ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium.) The images are a part of Euclid’s Early Release Observations, the ESA said, and "are at least four times sharper" than any photos taken by ground-based telescopes.
Euclid is able to cover large patches of the sky and look far into the universe using both visible and infrared light, the ESA explained.
ESA’s telescope targeted 17 astronomical objects and aims to uncover the secrets of the dark cosmos. Euclid’s survey hopes to reveal how and why the universe looks as it does today.
"Euclid will trace the hidden web-like foundations of the cosmos, map billions of galaxies across more than one-third of the sky, explore how our Universe formed and evolved over cosmic history, and study the most mysterious of its fundamental components: dark energy and dark matter," the ESA said.
This story was reported from Los Angeles.