Fresh satellite data reveals spectacular space discoveries

The release of the first survey data from the European Space Agency’s pioneering Euclid satellite has led to a flurry of scientific advances that further our understanding of the cosmos. 

Launched in July 2023, Euclid is mapping the Universe with unprecedented precision and accuracy. By examining more than one billion galaxies over six years, this groundbreaking space telescope aims to explore two of astronomy’s biggest mysteries: dark matter and dark energy. 

Despite covering less than 0.5 per cent of the complete study area, the data is already proving to be a treasure trove for UK scientists. 

Data analysis

Researchers from the University of Edinburgh lead the UK’s involvement in the data analysis and host the UK’s Science Data Centre for Euclid. 

As a key part of the Euclid Consortium, Edinburgh processes the huge amounts of data from the satellite before it is studied by teams in the UK and across the wider Euclid Consortium. This process is already having exciting ramifications for astronomy.

Rare events

A team based at the Universities of Oxford, Portsmouth and Newcastle combined the power of citizen scientists and machine learning algorithms to sift through the more than one million galaxies seen in Euclid’s latest data, searching for strong gravitational lenses. More than a thousand citizen scientists across the world took part through Space Warps, the dedicated strong lens search project hosted on the Zooniverse platform.

These phenomena occur when massive objects, such as galaxies, distort space-time so much that they warp the light from objects behind them into rings or arcs. 

Such lenses are incredibly rare – researchers liken it to searching for needles in a haystack - but the team has identified 500 strong lens candidates. 

Rarer still are systems which contain two galaxies being lensed by the same object. Four of these have been spotted and will help astronomers understand the shape and structure of the Universe. 

Dying stars

Astronomers at Lancaster University have used Euclid data to enhance their study of transients, objects whose brightness change over a relatively short time. 

Euclid’s immense power has helped researchers observe supernovae, the sudden bright explosions that occur when some stars die, long after they have disappeared from the view of observatories on Earth. 

Black holes

The Euclid-AGN team of researchers found a number of supermassive black holes gradually accumulating gas in the centres of galaxies, published in work led by PhD student Teresa Matamoro-Zatarain at the University of Bristol.  Also known as Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), they make up less than 10 per cent of the galaxy population in the Universe.

Combining Euclid data with other multi-wavelength surveys is enabling a new era of AGN exploration, experts say.

Satellite development

In addition to leading some of the first scientific papers to come from this data, the UK has played a key role in the development of Euclid since its inception. University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) led the production of Euclid’s visible instrument (VIS), a powerful camera used to capture visible light from distant galaxies.

Elsewhere, a partnership of seven UK universities contributed strongly to the Science Ground Segment, which receives the initial data from the Euclid satellite and transforms it into data that scientists can work with instantly.

A much larger data release is scheduled for October 2026 which will include results about the nature of dark energy. 

Related links

Euclid mission

School of Physics and Astronomy

_{Image credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by M. Walmsley, M. Huertas-Company, J.-C. Cuillandre}