Euclid Telescope: First Images Revealed From 'Dark Universe' Mission

AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: Europe's Euclid telescope is ready to begin its quest to understand the greatest mysteries in the Universe. Exquisite imagery from the space observatory shows its capabilities to be exceptional. Over the next six years, Euclid will survey a third of the heavens to get some clues about the nature of so-called dark matter and dark energy. The 1.4 billion euro Euclid telescope went into space in July. Since then, engineers have been fine-tuning it. There were some early worries. Initially, Euclid's optics couldn't lock on to stars to take a steady image. This required new software for the telescope's fine guidance sensor. Engineers also found some stray light was polluting pictures when the observatory was pointed in a certain way. But with these issues all now resolved, Euclid is good to go -- as evidenced by the release of five sample images on Tuesday. "No previous space telescope has been able to combine the breadth, depth and sharpness of vision that Euclid can," notes the BBC. "The astonishing James Webb telescope, for example, has much higher resolution, but it can't cover the amount of sky that Euclid does in one shot."

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