To celebrate the first images from the Euclid Mission, we are doing a special Euclid episode, including an overview of Euclid and interviews with Dr. Chris Conselise and Jonathan Wong, both of who are working with the spacecraft.

Overview of Euclid

The aim of the ESA's Euclid Mission is to create a map of the large-scale structure of the Universe by looking across more than a third of the sky and observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light years away. This will allow us to explore how the Universe has expanded and how structure has formed and shed a light on the contribution of dark matter, dark energy and gravity.

The telescope was launched on the 1st of July last year from Cape Canaveral using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and is currently orbiting around the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2, which is at an average distance of 1.5 million kilometres beyond Earth's orbit. This position means that it keeps pace with Earth as we orbit the sun. And it has friends. Both Gaia and JWST are orbiting the same point.

Euclid has two instruments on board: the visible instrument (VIS) and the near-infrared spectrometer and photometer (NISP). As the name suggests, VIS collects visible light from wavelengths of 550 nm (green) to 900 nm (near-infrared) and has a resolution equivalent to almost 70 4K resolution screens. NISP makes spectroscopic measurements of galaxies, which means it is interested in how much light they emit at each wavelength. This is useful for determining redshift and distance to each galaxy.

Interview with Dr. Chris Conselice

This month, Louisa talks to Dr. Chris Conselice about his involvement with Euclid as a Lead Legacy Scientist for the ESA Euclid Mission. Chris discussed his work looking for the earliest galaxies in the universe and how Euclid will complement the work of JWST so far.

Jodbite with Jonathan Wong

Our Euclid theme continues with our jodbite from Jonathan Wong, a PhD student at the University of Manchester working on Euclid. Louisa and Honor speak to him about life, the universe and everything to do with weak lensing.

Interviews : Chris Conselice, Jonathan Wong, Louisa Mason, and Honor Harris
Presenters : Phoebe Ryder, Honor Harris, and Louisa Mason
Editors : Lily Correa Magnus, Louisa Mason, George Bendo, Honor Harris, and Phoebe Ryder
Website : Lilia Correa Magnus and George Bendo
Producer : George Bendo and Jessy Marin
Cover Art : The Euclid spacecraft. CREDIT:ESA.