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What is and what could be dark energy?
There is no doubt in the science community, the expansion of the universe is accelerating! The reason behind this acceleration is one of the most challenging contemporary puzzles, and this is where the concept of dark energy comes in. Accounting for 68% of the energy in the universe, dark energy is at the same time responsible for the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. However, the crucial question remains: What could dark energy be?
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How do we know the Universe is expanding?
The idea of an expanding Universe is one of the most remarkable discoveries in the field of cosmology. It might seem counterintuitive at first, as we usually perceive the world around us as relatively static but it revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos and challenged our perception of the Universe as an unchanging entity. Let’s delve into the fascinating evidence that supports this groundbreaking idea.
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What’s in Euclid’s First Light images?
Euclid’s “First Light” engineering images show a lot of things. There are obviously some astronomical objects, but also some stranger features that are not. The reason is that these images are “raw”, they have not been digitally treated the ways as needs to be done to create science-ready images. They contain a lot of features that are properties of the detectors used, but also unwanted internal reflections of the optics, as well as cosmic rays that hit all space telescopes. Converting these images into science-ready data is the task of the Euclid Science Ground Segment, which has developed a huge and very detailed data treatment (“data reduction”) pipeline over many years.
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Euclid sees ‘First Light’
The Euclid satellite spacecraft is now officially an observatory: Euclid’s two instruments are seeing ‘First Light’ – recording the first engineering observations of the sky with a fully aligned and focussed telescope.
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The Euclid Consortium Blog: going public
Euclid is a space mission in the making. We are the consortium of more than 2500 scientists and engineers partnering with ESA, to build the so far most powerful telescope for studying the nature of Dark Energy, Dark Matter and cosmology in general. We have been designing and constructing the two instruments on-board Euclid, are obtaining complementary ground-based data, develop the data analysis system, as well as simulate, test, iterate and improve all of the above again and again.
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The Euclid telescope and satellite overview
The primary aim of the Euclid mission is to stringently test our current cosmological model by precisely measuring the shapes and positions of a billion faint galaxies. This ambitious goal must be achieved within a limited budget which in turn sets strict constraints on the overall mass of the satellite and the mission duration.
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