Newborn Planets and Orphaned Stars Revealed in New Images
Stunning images from the Euclid space telescope bring better focus to areas of deep space
The European Space Agency’s new Euclid telescope has been toiling away in relative obscurity since it produced its first images six months ago. New imagery was the basis for several scientific papers. Meanwhile, here is one of those new images, a striking view of a nebula called Messier 78.
The central region of Messier 78 is an area of intense star birth, all shrouded by the gas and dust that goes into making new stars. The scene is 1,300 light-years from Earth.
This infrared view, with uses a wavelength of light that passes through the clouds, offers unprecedented detail, revealing new stars and planets never before observed.
“The beauty of Euclid is that it covers large regions of the sky in great detail and depth, and can capture a wide range of different objects all in the same image – from faint to bright, from distant to nearby, from the most massive of galaxy clusters to small planets,” said ESA’s Director of Science, Carole Mundell. “We get both a very detailed and very wide view all at once. This amazing versatility has resulted in numerous new science results that, when combined with the results from Euclid’s surveying over the coming years, will significantly alter our understanding of the Universe.”
Among the discoveries by other new Euclid image: Some 1,500 billion orphaned stars scattered among and between a bunch of faraway galaxy clusters. The free-floating stars are thought to have been kicked out of their galaxies by the gravitational effects of galactic mergers.
You can see more of the new images at ESA’s Euclid site.