Euclid Mission Data Release Spans More Than 900 Million Galaxies (reuters.com) 24
The European Space Agency has released the largest dataset yet from its Euclid space telescope, containing 1.7 petabytes of observations covering more than 900 million galaxies. "The data unveiled on Thursday covered a survey of the sky equal to about 9,500 times the size of the moon as viewed from Earth," reports Reuters. "The mission's goal is to complete the "largest-ever three-dimensional atlas of the cosmos, spanning more than a third of the sky, in 2031." From the report: "It marks a major milestone for ESA's Euclid mission and for everyone involved," said astrophysicist Valeria Pettorino, ESA's Euclid project scientist. Euclid, launched from Florida in 2023, is gathering data on how the universe has expanded and how its structure has formed over time while amassing information about the nature of dark energy and dark matter and the role of gravity on large scales.
"Euclid will not just take images of galaxies in the sky, in two dimensions, but will also measure their distance, the third dimension. This will tell us where galaxies are in space and time, across 10 billion years, and in all directions beyond our galactic plane," Pettorino said. "Galaxies cluster along filaments, surrounded by empty space, and form a network that we call the cosmic web. Euclid will reconstruct the cosmic web and how it has grown over time. This is important because the exact configuration of the cosmic web, how many clusters or voids are there, how fast it changed, depend on the properties of dark energy and dark matter," Pettorino said.
[...] Previous Euclid data releases covered only a few days of observations. The newly released dataset includes more than a year of data and still spans only 14% of the total sky area Euclid is due to survey in visible and near-infrared light over six years. This data release will be completed next year with the first results on dark energy and dark matter.
"Euclid will not just take images of galaxies in the sky, in two dimensions, but will also measure their distance, the third dimension. This will tell us where galaxies are in space and time, across 10 billion years, and in all directions beyond our galactic plane," Pettorino said. "Galaxies cluster along filaments, surrounded by empty space, and form a network that we call the cosmic web. Euclid will reconstruct the cosmic web and how it has grown over time. This is important because the exact configuration of the cosmic web, how many clusters or voids are there, how fast it changed, depend on the properties of dark energy and dark matter," Pettorino said.
[...] Previous Euclid data releases covered only a few days of observations. The newly released dataset includes more than a year of data and still spans only 14% of the total sky area Euclid is due to survey in visible and near-infrared light over six years. This data release will be completed next year with the first results on dark energy and dark matter.
new point of comparison just dropped (Score:5, Insightful)
survey of the sky equal to about 9,500 times the size of the moon as viewed from Earth
I wanna believe I have a relatively lively imagination but this one is entirely fuckin' lost on me. If we gotta reach for layman relatable ways of measuring the area, couldn't we describe it as the fraction of the horizon to horizon sky it would cover? Wouldn't that be a pretty intuitive way of describing it?
Re: new point of comparison just dropped (Score:2)
That was my issue with it as well. Their chatbot tried to dumb things down to the point of being unintelligible.
hth (Score:2)
it's about 0.0014 olympic swimming pools.
Re:new point of comparison just dropped (Score:5, Informative)
It is 4.85% of the sky coverage. Data: the moon occupies an average solid angle of 6.418x10-5 steradians, or a fractional area of 5.107 ppm of the sky.
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Projected on a globe, equivalent to the land area of 2.58 times the USA (or 1.45 times Russia).
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Full moon areas are pretty standard units in astronomy journalism. The summary also says it's 14% of the mission goal, which is "more than a third."
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Imagine holding a small peppercorn at arm's length. That's about how much of your field of view it takes up.
I would like to name this new unit the smidgen.
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Dang. Someone beat me to it.
Smidgen: 1/32 teaspoon (1/2 of a pinch)
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Give it to me in the number of bananas held at arm's length.
Let me put that on my USB stick (Score:2)
Ow wait.
Re: Let me put that on my punch cards (Score:2)
Re: Let me put that on my punch cards (Score:5, Funny)
Do you think they emailed it to the New York Times and killed Outlook Online in the process?
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Re: Let me put that on my USB stick (Score:1)
uploaded to OneDrive aaaand
So God created over 900 million galaxies? (Score:1)
Why did God ostensibly go overboard just to amuse humans 4.3 Billion years after he formed the Earth and a fuckton of other creatures before humans arrived to be amused? The Christian Right Wingnuts will have no problem squaring this account with Bible since they can square anything given enough time and and those funny mushrooms God in his infinite wisdom has also provided.
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4.3 Billion years? I think you mean, 6,000 years.
Re: So God created over 900 million galaxies? (Score:1)
surely (Score:2)
By the law of averages, surely among those millions of galaxies, there must be one galaxy that contains at least one star that has at least one planet that has at least one moon that is made of green cheese.