Euclid opens a treasure trove of data and gives you a glimpse into the deep fields

On March 19, 2025, the European Space Agency’s Euclidean Mission will release the first batch of research data, including previews of deep areas. Here, hundreds of thousands of galaxies of various shapes and sizes take the central stage, giving you a glimpse into large organizations on the universe’s web.

The data release covering the huge areas of the sky in three mosaics also includes a number of galactic clusters, active galactic nuclei, temporary phenomena, and the initial classification survey of over 380,000 galaxies and over 500 candidate gravitational lens.

All this sets up a wide range of topic scenes that Dark Universe Detective Euclidean is set up to deal with in a rich dataset.

“Euclidean again shows us as the ultimate discovery machine. We can explore galaxies on a spectacular scale and explore the history of the universe and the invisible forces that shape the universe.”

“The release of the first data from Euclidean research unlocks a treasure trove of scientists diving into and tackling some of the most interesting questions in modern science.

Track the universe web in Euclidean Deepfield

Euclideans scouting three areas of the sky and ultimately provides the deepest observation of its mission. So far, scans of each region have been observed for a week, and Euclidean had already discovered 26 million galaxies.

The farthest of them is up to 10.5 billion light years. The field also includes a small population of bright quasars that can be seen further away. Over the next few years, Euclide will pass these three regions dozens of times and will truly “deep” capture these areas by the end of the nominal mission in 2030.

But the first glimpse of the 63 squares of the sky, an equivalent area of ​​over 300 times the full moon, already gives an impressive preview of the scale of Euclidean epic space atlas when the mission is completed. This atlas covers one-third of the entire sky (14 000 square degrees) with this high quality detail.

“It is impressive that the abundant data that can be used for a variety of astronomy purposes, from galaxy shapes to powerful lenses, clusters, star formations, and more, has already given us a wealth of data through observations in one deep field area.”

“We observe each deep field 30-52 times more in Euclidean six-year mission. Every time we improve how we see those areas and how we can solve the number of objects we can observe. Think of the discoveries awaiting us.”

To answer the mystery it was designed, Euclide uses its high-resolution image visible instrument (VIS) to measure the distribution of billions of galaxies very accurately, while its near-infrared instrument (NISP) is essential for unlocking the distance and mass of galaxies.

New images have already introduced this feature of hundreds of thousands of galaxies, beginning to suggest large organizations of these galaxies within the universe web.

These normal and dark matter filaments weave through the universe, from which galaxies formed and evolved. This is an important part of the puzzle for understanding the mystical nature of dark matter and dark energy, and together it appears to account for 95% of the universe.

“The possibility that Euclidean could learn more about dark matter and dark energy from the massive structures of the universe web will only reach when he completes the entire investigation. However, this initial amount of data release offers a unique look at the large organizations of the galaxy, as the French Astrophysic de Paris.

Humans and AI classify over 380,000 galaxies

Euclid is expected to capture images of over 1.5 billion galaxies over six years and send around 100 GB of data back every day. Such an impressive large dataset creates incredible discovery opportunities, but presents major challenges when it comes to searching, analyzing and cataloging galaxies. Combined with thousands of human citizen science volunteers and experts, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms play a key role.

“It’s a crucial moment in terms of how we tackle a massive investigation of astronomy. AI is a fundamental and necessary part of our process to fully utilize Euclidean vast datasets.”

“We build tools and provide measurements. This way we can provide cutting-edge science in a few weeks compared to the long-standing process of analyzing such large research,” he adds.

The major milestones of this effort are the first detailed catalogue of over 380,000 galaxies, categorized according to characteristics such as the spiral arm, central bar, and tidal tails that infer the galaxy. The catalog is created by the “Zoobot” AI algorithm. During last year’s intensive month-long campaign at the Galaxy Zoo, 9,976 human volunteers worked together to teach Zoobot to recognize Galaxy traits by categorizing Euclidean images.

This first catalogue, released today, represents just 0.4% of the total number of similarly-resolution galaxies expected to be imaged over Euclidean’s lifetime. The final catalog presents at least more detailed forms of galaxies than ever before, and will help scientists answer questions such as how spiral arms are formed and how ultra-large black holes grow.

“We look at galaxies from inside out, from how we govern the evolution of our internal structures to how our external environment forms transformations over time,” adds Clotilde.

“Euclidean is the goldmine of data, and its impact will range from galaxy evolution to the larger local cosmological goals of missions.”

Gravity Lens Discovery Engine

Light travelling from the far galaxy towards us is bent and distorted by normal and dark matter in the foreground. This effect is called a gravity lens and is one of the tools Euclidean uses to reveal how dark matter is distributed throughout the universe.

If the distortion is very obvious, it is known as a “strong lens” and can result in features such as Einstein rings, arcs, and multiple imaged lenses.

Using initial sweeps with AI models, citizen science inspections, expert review and modeling followed, and the first catalogue of 500 Galaxy-Galaxy Strong Lens candidates was released, almost all of which were previously unknown. This type of lens occurs when the galaxy in the foreground and the halo of dark matter in the darkness acts as a lens, distorting the image of the background galaxy along the field of view towards Euclidean.

With the help of these models, Euclidean won around 7,000 candidates in the major cosmological data release planned for the end of 2026, and by the end of the mission it’s roughly 100,000 galaxy garaxy strong lenses, about 100 times more known than it is currently.

Euclid can also measure “weak” lenses when the distortion of the background source is much less. Such subtle distortions can only be detected by analyzing a large number of galaxies statistically.

Over the next few years, Euclidean will measure the distorted shapes of billions of galaxies that exceed the 10 billion years of universe history, providing a 3D view of the distribution of dark matter in our universe.

“Thanks to unprecedented surveying capabilities, Euclidean covers large, large areas of the sky very quickly,” says Pierre Ferrutz, ESA’s Euclidean mission manager based at ESA’s European Center for Space Astronomy (ESAC), home to the astronomical science archives where Euclidean data is available.

“This data release highlights the incredible possibilities we have by combining the strengths of Euclidean, AI, citizen science and experts into a single discovery engine that is essential to tackling the vast amount of data returned by Euclidean.”