This brilliant new image, taken by Europe’s Euclid Space Telescope, offers a glimpse of the type of imaging that will be possible with NASA’s upcoming Roman Telescope.
By Stephanie Pappas edited by Claire Cameron
This image of Euclid (with colors added using ground images) zooms in on the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. The region gets its golden hue from a myriad of old, cold, yellowish-tinted stars. Stars in this region are highly populated, so observing in this direction increases the likelihood of detecting microlensing events.
ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CFHT, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre and E. Bertin (CEA Paris-Saclay)
The center of Milky Way is on fire, lit with pink-purple and golden hues in a stunning new image captured by Euclid, a space telescope of the European Space Agency (ESA).
The glamor of gold and plum offers a glimpse into the heart of our galaxy, an area called the galactic bulge, where some 10 billion stars are squeezed together in the shape of an elongated football. It is also a glimpse of a region of the sky that NASA will explore in depth with the next Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescopescheduled to launch no earlier than August 30.
Euclid interrupted his normal survey of the sky to capture the image, said NASA principal investigator Jason Rhodes. statement.
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“Adding the Euclid snapshot to Roman’s future study will help us better map our galaxy and more easily identify hard-to-find cosmic treasures like isolated black holes and rogue planets,” Rhodes said.
The full image below includes about 5 square degrees of the sky, the equivalent of 25 full moons. On the right side, the telescope scans the galactic plane as if through fog; Dark spots are thick molecular clouds – regions of cold, dense dust and gas where new hydrogen molecules form. Towards the upper left corner of the image, the galactic plane thins and Euclid gains a clearer view of the distant stars.
This image taken by ESA’s (European Space Agency) Euclid (with colors added using ground-based imagery) provides an earlier snapshot of a region of our galaxy that NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will observe repeatedly over the next few years.
ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CFHT, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre and E. Bertin (CEA Paris-Saclay)
Euclid captured the image in a single day, but the Roman telescope will examine 1.7 square degrees of depth, the equivalent of 8.5 full moons of sky, over five years. Its repeated observations will reveal new planets and other roaming cosmic objects. Roman will also be on the lookout for microlensing events, which occur when a star, planet, black hole or other massive object aligns with a star from the telescope’s perspective. The mass of the giant object gently bends the star’s light, magnifying the view of the object.
Among these mystery objects? Massive black holes left after the death of the largest stars. Some of these black holes are so huge that they create long-lasting microlensing events, which is part of the reason scientists want to observe a small patch of the sky over many years, to understand how they change and evolve over time.
Euclid’s broader, less detailed overview provides a baseline for Roman’s early observations. Data from the ESA telescope will also be combined with Roman’s Galactic Plane Survey, which will map a large area of the flat, star-filled plane of the Milky Way in unprecedented detail.
“We have shown that these two telescopes can work together to perform scientific research that goes beyond what either was originally designed to do,” Rhodes said. “In doing so, we have established a blueprint for future coordinated observations that can unlock far more discoveries than either mission could do alone.”
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