Mysteries of the darkish universe which have bewildered astronomers for hundreds of years may lastly be solved by Southampton scientists after the Euclid satellite tv for pc was fired into area.
Artist impression of the Euclid mission in area. Picture credit score: ESA by way of Wikipedia, CC BY-SA IGO 3.0
The £1billion Euclid rocket was launched by SpaceX in July to disclose the origins of the cosmos. The satellite tv for pc, which is fitted with telescopic area cameras, is on a six-year mission to make clear darkish vitality and darkish matter – which scientists say account for 95 per cent of the recognized universe.
Professor of Astrophysics Francesco Shankar, from the College of Southampton, is a part of the worldwide consortium engaged on Euclid with NASA and the European Area Company. He mentioned the satellite tv for pc will create an enormous map of the construction of the universe by observing billions of galaxies.
Prof Shankar added: “The Euclid area telescope will chart the distribution of galaxies throughout cosmic area and time to disclose the speed of enlargement and formation of the universe. These are invaluable observational constraints which may make clear the character of darkish vitality.”
Euclid satellite tv for pc launches into area. Picture credit score: College of Southampton
The Euclid satellite tv for pc was launched from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket at its Cape Canaveral station in Florida and is at the moment flying in direction of the L2 Lagrange level — positioned 1.5million kilometres from Earth.
It intends to {photograph} greater than one-third of the extragalactic sky outdoors the Milky Means utilizing its high-precision digital camera – and can carry out near-infrared spectroscopy of a whole bunch of tens of millions of galaxies and stars over the identical space.
Scientists will use the information collected by the satellite tv for pc not solely to check darkish vitality, darkish matter, and different gravity theories, but additionally to unravel the evolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes, which is the topic of Prof Shankar and his staff’s work at Southampton.
He added: “Darkish vitality and darkish matter are elusive parts – and we don’t know a lot about both. By imaging billion of galaxies, Euclid will give us information on the construction of the universe as much as very massive scales and at totally different cosmic epochs, offering invaluable observational constraints on the character of darkish matter and darkish vitality.”
The College is a founding member of Area South Central, the UK’s largest regional area cluster, which champions the area trade throughout the area to gas innovation by new enterprise and educational collaborations.
The Euclid satellite tv for pc’s area mission will final till at the very least 2029. The European Area Company, which funded the mission, mentioned the standard of the photographs will probably be 4 instances sharper than these taken from the bottom.
For extra about Euclid go to www.esa.int.
Supply: College of Southampton
