Telescope and instruments

What Euclid really sees in the sky

Euclid’s goal is to produce scientific insight in the fields of cosmology and astrophysics. New knowledge comes in the shape of understanding of processes, new ‘laws of nature’, or numbers relating different physical properties to each other. However, the Euclid spacecraft initially observes the sky, and its data after a downlink to Earth is processed in a set of complex data analysis pipelines to extract such numbers and relations. Some of the images that have been calibrated to scientific standards that allow such an extraction have already been publicized – but how does Euclid’s raw, unprocessed view into the sky look?

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ESA unveils zoom into Euclid’s first large piece of the sky

Euclid has been surveying the sky since 14 February 2024 and data processing is in full swing – the first public release of 53 deg² of science-grade Wide Survey data will take place in March next year. But how much data has Euclid already observed and how can we possibly visualize this? At a rate of 10 deg² per day, the Euclid Wide Survey has already surpassed 1000 deg², that is 5000x the apparent size of the Moon in the sky! Now ESA has put out a first set of images that allow to grasp how much data Euclid is and will be producing.

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Euclid Reference Publications: the Euclid Mission Overview

Euclid is a complex mission, consisting of a spacecraft and scientific instruments, a massive cosmological simulation, and large and complex data processing segment to turn instrumental data into scientific meaning. Now, one year after launch, the Euclid Consortium has published a set of five reference papers, providing both the scientific background and an up to date description of the instruments and simulations. Paper 1 (Euclid. I. Overview of the Euclid mission, Euclid Collaboration: Mellier et al. 2024) is giving a full overview of the Euclid mission after launch, ranging from the overall background, the satellite and instruments, the surveys, and finally introduces both the cosmology diagnostics as well as astronomy projects envisioned with Euclid.

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Euclid Reference Publications: the Euclid Instruments

In our mini-series about the Euclid Consortium’s set of new reference papers we are now turning to instrument descriptions: Paper 2 (Euclid. II. The VIS Instrument, Euclid Collaboration: Cropper et al. 2024) describe the VIS instrument, papers 3 and 4 (Euclid. III. The NISP Instrument, Euclid Collaboration: Jahnke et al.; Euclid. IV. The NISP Calibration Unit, Euclid Collaboration: Hormuth et al.) the NISP instrument.

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