Euclid's 208-Gigapixel glimpse into the Universe

[Sancho]

Discover the first page of ESA Euclid’s great cosmic atlas and marvel at millions of stars and galaxies captured in pristine detail, in a huge 208-gigapixel mosaic. The mosaic covers an area of the Southern Sky more than 500 times the area of the full Moon as seen from Earth.

This video takes you through a rare sky dive. Starting from a vast cosmic panorama bedazzled by some 14 million galaxies, a series of ever-deeper zooms brings you to a crisp view of a swirling spiral galaxy, in a final image enlarged 600 times compared to the full mosaic.

Although the scenes are enticing, they are not taken for their beauty, but to help us advance our understanding of the cosmos. Many of the 14 million galaxies in the initial vista will be used to study the hidden influence of dark matter and dark energy on the Universe.

Unveiled as a teaser of the wide survey, the mosaic accounts for 1% of the area that Euclid will cover over six years, and was obtained by combining 260 observations collected in just two weeks.

[lastlib]

1. "My God!! It's full of STARS!!"

(to quote David Bowman.....)

Dayum!! And we are on a pale blue dot, a speck of dust suspended in a starbeam......

[Warpy]

2. You mean full of GALAXIES which are full of STARS

most of which have PLANETS!. Galactic lensing around some of the most distant galaxies has revealed even more galaxies far behind them, suggesting the universe is larger and older than we puny humans thought

We're in the infancy of looking at this stuff and far away from understanding most of it.

[lastlib]

3. Yes, you're right, but....

...that wasn't what David Bowman said in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was trying to be faithful to the movie bit, on the theory that more people might get the reference.

[Warpy]

4. Yes, it's amazing how fast that movie got dated

even though the graphics were first rate for its time.

I saw it on heavy drugs. The HAL stuff was too tedious for words, so my friend and I went to the lobby to groove on the loud carpeting. We had a lot of company doing the same thing for the same reason. We all went back in for the denouement.

Yeah, I remember the 60s and I was there....sort of. I just don't remember it well enough to quote.