ESA

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.

What’s in Euclid’s First Light images?Read More »

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.

Euclid sees ‘First Light’Read More »