'Cosmic web' lights up

'It's a new milestone for our dark universe detective.'

- 

Europe's Euclid space telescope, which is on a mission to shed light on the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, released its first data yesterday with a little help from volunteers and artificial intelligence.

The telescope launched in 2023, aiming to chart one-third of the sky — encompassing 1.5 billion galaxies — to create what has been billed as humanity's most accurate 3D map of the universe.

Euclid, which is now hovering 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, has previously released images of a range of strange galaxies, colorful nebulas and shining stars.

But the first release of astronomical data is "a new milestone for our dark universe detective," the European Space Agency's science director Carole Mundell said.

The huge amount of data — which was accompanied by 27 scientific papers — still only covers less than 0.5% of the sky that Euclid will scan over its six-year mission.

Yet the early data already offers hints about the overall structure of the universe known as the "cosmic web," project scientist Valeria Pettorino said.