Euclid telescope snaps best photo yet of Milky Way’s heart

By Frédéric Bourigault, AFP

The Euclid house telescope has captured the biggest and most detailed photo ever taken of our galaxy’s crowded heart, a blinding picture full of 60 million stars, the European Space Agency says.

The new photo of the Milky Way’s shiny centre will assist in the seek for planets past our Solar System, the company added.

At the centre of our spiral galaxy “lies the bulge – a large bubble containing billions of stars”, French astronomer Jean-Charles Cuillandre, who works on the Euclid mission, advised AFP.

Euclid launched in 2023 on a mission to chart one-third of the sky within the hopes of shedding mild on the enduring mysteries of darkish matter and darkish vitality.

“Now we’ve decided to point Euclid at the brightest area of the sky – and it works superbly, it’s extraordinary,” Cuillandre stated.

Euclid, which is hovering 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, captured the picture with its seen mild digital camera over 26 hours in March 2025.

The mosaic consists of 9 pictures, every protecting an space of the sky bigger than the Moon.

The unique picture was captured in black and white, however color was added utilizing observations from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope situated in Hawaii.

However “we didn’t do this just to produce a beautiful image”, Cuillandre emphasised.

In current a long time, scientists have recognized 1000’s of planets outdoors our Solar System, that are often known as exoplanets.

New exoplanets are unlikely to be recognized throughout the Euclid picture, however it would assist the scientists measure the mass of planets already noticed – and those who can be found sooner or later.

It can do that through a course of referred to as microlensing, which occurs when one star crosses over one other.

The nearer star “acts like a cosmic magnifying glass, bending and brightening the background star’s light”, the ESA defined in a press release.

If a planet is orbiting the nearer star, its gravity additionally barely bends this mild. This tiny change in brightness permits scientists to trace the planet down.

“During the last 20 years, almost 300 exoplanets have been discovered using this technique, all with ground-based telescopes and all towards the centre of our galaxy,” French astronomer Jean-Philippe Beaulieu stated within the assertion.

For instance, Beaulieu stated he led the staff that found an icy planet “a bit like Hoth from Star Wars” 20 years in the past.

The new picture from Euclid “includes 51 known planetary systems – and it will assist in studying many more that will be found”, he added.