Highlights of The Perseus Cluster of Galaxies | ESA Euclid Space Telescope

Highlights of The Perseus Cluster of Galaxies | ESA Euclid Space Telescope

These high resolution cutouts from Euclid's full view of the Perseus Cluster showcases the power of the European Space Agency's new Euclid space telescope in obtaining extremely sharp images over a large region of the sky in one single pointing. Although these images represent only a small part of the entire color view, the same quality shown here is available over the full field.

Many faint galaxies were previously unseen. Several of them are so distant that their light has taken 10 billion years to reach us. By mapping the distribution and shapes of these galaxies, cosmologists will be able to find out more about how dark matter shaped the Universe that we see today.

This is the first time that such a large image has allowed us to capture so many Perseus galaxies with a high level of detail. Perseus is one of the most massive structures known in the Universe, located ‘just’ 240 million light-years away from Earth, containing thousands of galaxies, immersed in a vast cloud of hot gas. Astronomers demonstrated that galaxy clusters like Perseus can only have formed if dark matter is present in the Universe.

Image Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA 

Image Processing: J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Release Date: Nov. 7, 2023

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