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The European Space Agency (ESA) Euclid’s astronomical observations has captured the brightest and most detailed image ever found of Pictures of the Milky Way galaxy burst, the central region of our galaxy.
The image is a painting that contains more than 60 million stars, as well as constellations. This will allow scientists to confirm the existence of exoplanets using the microlensing technique and measure their abundance with greater precision.
Euclid’s power
Although Euclid was designed to observe billions of galaxies far away, its ultra-bright camera can focus on stars in the center of the Milky Way – the brightest and most populated region – without being disturbed by high brightness.
On March 23, 2025, Euclid looked at the galaxy, capturing this great image in just 26 hours. The result was spectacular: an image made up of nine different “pointers” (views) from his optical camera, each covering a sky larger than the full moon.
Even the color of Euclid’s visual images is similar to that of Hubble Space Telescopethere is one major difference: Each point that Euclid maps in just a few hours covers an area 270 times larger than what Hubble can see. And very fast. To achieve this, the Keck Observatory spent nearly 2,000 hours reviewing this image.
Image of the Milky Way
The new Euclid image captures more than 60 million stars, along with clusters of nebulae and stars, in one of the most populated regions of the Milky Way – a perfect place to hunt for exoplanets through gravitational microlensing.
Jean-Philippe Beaulieu, who led the project, said: Press release. “In the past 20 years, almost 300 exoplanets have been discovered using this method, all with ground-based telescopes and all looking at the center of our galaxy. This image from Euclid contains 51 known exoplanets – and will help to learn more about what can be found.”
Measuring Planetary Masses
Although detecting the microlensing phenomenon required several weeks of observations – meaning that Euclid was unable to detect new phenomena during his short observation period – what makes this image so important is that it provides the information necessary to measure the number of planets already known, as well as planets that have yet to be discovered.
“In 24 hours, Euclid has already caught the stars involved in all the future events that the Roman telescope will detect, but before the stars and planets involved collided,” said Natalia Rektsini, who led the publication of the data, in a press release. (The Nancy Grace Roman space telescope is expected to be launched later this year.) “This means that anyone who notices that there is another very interesting object in the same area, for example Roman, from now on will be able to use Euclid’s data as it was in the past and see what the stars looked like before they crossed.”
In fact, Euclid’s observations will serve as a storehouse for future observations, enabling detailed investigations of exoplanets and accurate measurements of their masses.
“In just 24 hours, Euclid has provided unique data on the center of the Milky Way, and a vast and spectacular view of this region,” said Valeria Pettorino, ESA’s Euclid project scientist, in a news release. “This information can also be used for other scientific purposes, from dark circles and dwarf stars to the movement of stars and dust across our galaxy.”
This article appeared first WIRED Italy and translated from Italian.
