#euclid-consortium — Public Fediverse posts

A Euclidean Model

A few weeks ago the Euclid Consortium released a printable 3D model of the Euclid Spacecraft. Being a mere theoretician, I don’t know how to operate a 3D printer so I had to ask our technicians if they would make a version for use at open days, etc. The larger version is indeed quite large and everyone has been busy with labs etc, so took a while to print, but thanks to Pat Seery (who did the printing) and Ian McAuley (who assembled and painted the result), here is our model:

The scale for the model is 1:16, so its actual dimensions are 29.5 × 19.5 × 19 cm for the model, and 33 × 20 × 20 cm including the stand. The real thing is over 4.5m tall. There is a little model of an astronaut that comes with the kit (not pictured above) to give an idea of the real size. It’s going to get a protective coat of varnish on it before we use it in public, but it will be a nice addition to our open-day stand and will otherwise be on show in a display case in the Physics Department.

Anyway, if you have access to a 3D printer and would like to make your own version, you can download full instructions here.

Euclid Space Warps – help the hunt for galaxy-galaxy lenses!

I’m sharing the text of a press release from Euclid here to encourage readers to join in this new Zooniverse project.

–o–

In brief

With the launch of Space Warps, a new citizen science project on the Zooniverse platform, you can now join in the search to find rare and elusive strong gravitational lenses in never-before-seen images captured by the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope. The project aims at shining a light on dark matter in galaxies and providing clues about mysterious dark energy.

In-depth

Warps in spacetime do not only show up in science fiction movies like Interstellar. In real life, we can see the warping effect that gravity has on spacetime in the form of gravitational lensing.

The enormous gravity of a massive object – such as a galaxy or cluster of galaxies – distorts the shape of spacetime and can bend the light rays coming from a distant galaxy behind. By warping spacetime, the foreground galaxy acts like a magnifying glass.

Light from the background object that would be obscured doesn’t travel in a straight line anymore. Instead, it curves around the intervening mass, often producing multiple images, stretched arcs, or even a complete ring known as ‘Einstein ring’, like the one recently discovered by Euclid.

Strong gravitational lenses offer a striking demonstration of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, showing that matter in the Universe can act as a natural telescope, bringing distant objects into sight.

ESA’s Euclid telescope is revolutionising the studies of strong gravitational lensing by providing very sensitive imaging over large swaths of the sky in unprecedented detail. This is exactly what is needed to identify rare gravitational lenses.

In March 2025, 500 galaxy-galaxy strong lenses were found nestled in just the first 0.04% of Euclid data, most of them previously unknown. This pioneering catalogue was created thanks to the combined effort from citizen scientists, artificial intelligence (AI) and researchers.

Early glimpse of new Euclid images

As Euclid continues its survey, sending around 100 GB of data back to Earth every day, ESA and the Euclid Consortium once again need help from citizen scientists to identify strong gravitational lenses in a large data set.

For this, the Space Warps team has launched a citizen science project based on new Euclid images, which will be part of the future Euclid Data Release 1. While this data is not public yet, by participating in this new citizen science project you can get an early glimpse of these new images of galaxies captured by the telescope.

For this project, you will be inspecting new high quality imaging data from Euclid in which many previously unknown strong lenses are hiding. About three hundred thousand images pre-selected by AI algorithms will be shown, which are fine-tuned with the results from the initial citizen-science Euclid strong lens search. These are the highest ranked candidates from a whopping 72 million galaxies from DR1 that were classified by the AI algorithms. Scientists expect that this exquisite high-quality data will reveal more than 10 000 new lenses.

What can we learn from strong lenses

The Euclid mission explores how the Universe has expanded and how its structure has changed through cosmic history using mainly two methods: weak lensing and baryonic acoustic oscillations. From this, scientists can learn more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

Strong gravitational lenses can also provide insights into these central questions. For example, strong lensing features can ‘weigh’ individual galaxies and clusters of galaxies. This reveals the total matter (whether dark or light) and traces the distribution of dark matter. By studying strong lenses across cosmic time, scientists can trace the expansion of the Universe and its apparent acceleration. This will provide additional insight into the role of dark energy.

“We’ve already seen the success of combining AI with visual inspection by citizen volunteers and scientists on Space Warps, efficiently finding hundreds of high‑probability lens candidates in an initial small Euclid search in 2024”, explains Aprajita Verma, Space Warps’ co-founder and project lead at the University of Oxford, UK.
“In this brand new DR1 data, 30 times larger than the initial search and together with our improved AI algorithms, we are expecting to find more than 10 000 high quality lens candidates. This is more than four times the number of lenses than we have been able to find since the first gravitational lens was discovered nearly 50 years ago.”

This step-change is possible thanks to Euclid. The mission can map large areas of the sky with unique sharpness, an ideal combination for finding rare objects like strong gravitational lenses.

“We can’t wait to see what we will find within this unprecedented dataset. Join us on Space Warps to take part in this exciting search!” concludes Aprajita.

About Euclid
Euclid was launched in July 2023 and started its routine science observations on 14 February 2024. The goal of the mission is to reveal the hidden influence of dark matter and dark energy on the visible Universe. Over a period of six years, Euclid will observe the shapes, distances and motions of billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years.

Euclid is a European mission, built and operated by ESA, with contributions from NASA. The Euclid Consortium – consisting of more than 2000 scientist from 300 institutes in 15 European countries, the USA, Canada, and Japan – is responsible for providing the scientific instruments and scientific data analysis. ESA selected Thales Alenia Space as prime contractor for the construction of the satellite and its service module, with Airbus Defence and Space chosen to develop the payload module, including the telescope. NASA provided the detectors of the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer, NISP. Euclid is a medium-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision Programme.

R.I.P. Yannick Mellier (1958-2025)

Last night I received a message via the Euclid Consortium conveying the very sad news of the death, at the age of 67, of the French astrophysicist and cosmologist Yannick Mellier (pictured left). Among many other things, Yannick was the Euclid Consortium Lead in which role he took on enormous responsibility for getting the project started and, with his team, keeping everything running. His loss is incalculable.

Yannick’s research work focussed on cosmology and the search for dark matter using gravitational lensing. Back in 1987 he was part of the observational team that discovered the first giant arc produced by strong gravitational lensing. He also did pioneering work in the field of weaking gravitational lensing with the Canada-France Hawaii Telescope in that regard starting back in 2000.

For well over a decade now Yannick had been involved with the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission. He was a major force right from the beginning, making the proposal, and after it was accepted leading the Consortium assembled to bring the project into being, preparing for launch, and dealing with the first data. The Euclid Consortium is a huge collaboration and it is impossible to overestimate the scale of the task facing the Lead. The first full data release (DR1) from Euclid will take place towards the end of next year (2026). It is sad beyong words that he did not live to see this.

During the period when I was Chair of the Euclid Consortium Diversity Committee I had a number of interactions with Yannick, sometimes dealing with difficult and confidential matters. I found him to be a man of great wisdom and sensitivity. Despite having many other things to deal with, including a long-term illness, he was unfailingly supportive and his advice was always sound.

The following is an excerpt from the message sent out yesterday:

Yannick’s death leaves a huge void within the consortium and our community. Those of us who have been here the longest know how hard he worked to make the Euclid project a success. He became its embodiment, working tirelessly to ensure its success; we owe him an immense debt of gratitude, and we will surely have the opportunity to reflect in detail on all that we owe him.

Indeed. I hope the Euclid Consortium – and the international cosmological community generally – will, at some stage, organize an appropriate tribute to Yannick.

Rest in Peace, Yannick Mellier (1958-2025)

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam

#Cosmology #Euclid #EuclidConsortium #GravitationalLensing #YannickMellier

The Euclid Consortium is celebrating the first year of the journey of the European Space Agency’s Euclid Mission into space! Over the past 52 weeks, Euclid has been scanning the cosmos, uncovering new insights into dark matter, dark energy, and the structure of the universe. The Euclid Consortium has produced a slideshow, showcasing the key moments and discoveries from the first year in space.

The slideshow can be seen on YouTube here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D2vKGl-A98

Here is a poster:

This can also found in interactive form here where you can click on each of the 52 images to see what it’s about.

P.S. The subtitle of the poster is “first year of a big journey to new physics”. There’s no guarantee that Euclid will find any new physics, rather than confirming our existing ideas, but it might.

https://telescoper.blog/2024/10/07/52-weeks-of-euclid-in-space/

#Euclid #EuclidConsortium #EuropeanSpaceAgency

Today sees the launch of a new initiative between Galaxy Zoo (part of the Zooniverse conglomerate) and the Euclid Consortium which I am delighted to be able to promote on this blog. What follows the graphic is the text of the announcement which is being promoted across social media today. I’ll start with a little factoid which might surprise you: already in November 2023, before science operations even began, Euclid had sent back to Earth more data than the Hubble Space Telescope has done in in its entire lifetime.

Thanks to a new Galaxy Zoo project launched today, you can help identify the shapes of thousands of galaxies in images taken by ESA’s Euclid space telescope. These classifications will help scientists answer questions about how the shapes of galaxies have changed over time, and what caused these changes and why. 

In its mission to map out the Universe, Euclid will image hundreds of thousands of distant galaxies. In November 2023 and May 2024, the world got its first glimpse at the quality of Euclid’s images, which included a variety of sources, from nearby nebulas to distant clusters of galaxies. In the background of each of these images are hundreds of thousands of distant galaxies. 

For the next six years, the spacecraft is expected to send around 100 GB of data back to Earth every day. That’s a lot of data, and labelling that through human effort alone is incredibly difficult.  

That’s why ESA and Euclid consortium scientists have partnered with Galaxy Zoo. This is a citizen science project on the Zooniverse platform, where members of the public can help classify the shapes of galaxies.  

Euclid will release its first catalogues of data to the scientific community starting in 2025, but in the meantime any volunteer on the Galaxy Zoo project can have a glimpse at previously unseen images from the telescope. 

You could be the first person to lay eyes on a galaxy 

The first set of data, which contains tens of thousands of galaxies selected from more than 800 000 images, has been made available on the platform, and is waiting for you to help classify them. 

If you partake in the project, you could be the first to lay eyes on Euclid’s latest images. Not only that, you could also be the first human ever to see the galaxy in the image.  

The Galaxy Zoo project was first launched in 2007, and asked members of the public to help classify the shapes of a million galaxies from images taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. In the past 17 years, Galaxy Zoo has remained operational, with more than 400 000 people classifying the shapes of galaxies from other projects and telescopes, including the the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.  

Humans and AI working together 

These classifications are not only useful for their immediate scientific potential, but also as a training set for Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms. Without being taught what to look for by humans, AI algorithms struggle to classify galaxies. But together, humans and AI can accurately classify limitless numbers of galaxies. 

At Zooniverse, the team has developed an AI algorithm called ZooBot, which will sift through the Euclid images first and label the ‘easier ones’ of which a lot of examples already exist in previous galaxy surveys. When ZooBot is not confident on the classification of a galaxy, perhaps due to complex or faint structures, it will show it to users on Galaxy Zoo to get their human classifications, which will then help ZooBot to learn more.  

On the platform, volunteers will be presented with images of galaxies and will then be asked several questions, such as “Is the galaxy round?”, or “Are there signs of spiral arms?”. 

After being trained on these human classifications, ZooBot will be integrated in the Euclid catalogues to provide detailed classifications for hundreds of millions of galaxies, making it the largest scientific catalogue to date, and enabling groundbreaking new science.  

This project makes use of the ESA Datalabs digital platform to generate a large number of cutouts of galaxies imaged by Euclid. 

Thanks to a new Galaxy Zoo project launched today, you can help identify the shapes of thousands of galaxies in images taken by ESA’s Euclid space telescope. These classifications will help scientists answer questions about how the shapes of galaxies have changed over time, and what caused these changes and why. 

The first set of data, which contains tens of thousands of galaxies selected from more than 800 000 images, has been made available on the platform, and is waiting for you to help classify them.  

Examples of Euclid galaxies to classify are shown in this image.  

About Euclid 

Euclid was launched in July 2023 and started its routine science observations on 14 February 2024. The goal of the mission is to reveal the hidden influence of dark matter and dark energy on the visible Universe. Over a period of six years, Euclid will observe the shapes, distances and motions of billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years.  

Euclid is a European mission, built and operated by ESA, with contributions from NASA. The Euclid Consortium – consisting of more than 2000 scientists from 300 institutes in 15 European countries, the USA, Canada and Japan – is responsible for providing the scientific instruments and scientific data analysis. ESA selected Thales Alenia Space as prime contractor for the construction of the satellite and its service module, with Airbus Defence and Space chosen to develop the payload module, including the telescope. NASA provided the detectors of the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer, NISP. Euclid is a medium-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision Programme. 

https://telescoper.blog/2024/08/01/euclid-galaxy-zoo/

#darkMatter #ESA #Euclid #EuclidConsortium #GalaxyZoo #SpaceX #Universe

With the reveal of the first full-colour images of #ESAEuclid

👉🏻 only 2️⃣ days away

(did we mention that already? 😉 )

if you want to read up on the scientific and technical background of the #Euclid mission, the spacecraft 🛰️ , the instruments 📷 and science 👩🏾‍🔬 , we recommend our #EuclidConsortium website:

👉🏼 https://www.euclid-ec.org

We have an image gallery, technical descriptions, and a blog with background info.

#astrodon #astronomy #science #space #DarkMatter #DarkEnergy #gravity #scicom

Are you interested in working with #ESAEuclid 👨🏿‍🏭 👩🏽‍🔧 👷‍♀️? The #EuclidConsortium and partners always have numerous job openings in #astrophysics, #software, and #datascience, and across various countries. 🔭 👩‍💻 📝

Find them on the #AAS job register:

👉 https://jobregister.aas.org/search/node/Euclid

#ESA #DarkMatter #DarkEnergy #astrodon #science #sciencejobs #space #astronomy

Today, Monday 31 July 2023, is #ESAEuclid's 🛰️ First Light 💡day. Tune in at 14:00 CEST (12:00 UTC) to the

👉 #EuclidConsortium website (https://www.euclid-ec.org/euclid-sees-first-light) or

👉 #ESA's #Euclid site (https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Euclid)

to see - and read about - Euclid's first engineering ⚙️ images 🖼️!

#DarkMatter #DarkEnergy #astrodon #spacedon #astronomy

We would like to welcome our 800th follower 🤸 and again would like to point to:

* Our #EuclidConsortium website at https://www.euclid-ec.org, with primers on the mission, instruments, science, and the Consortium

*#ESA's #Euclid site at https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Euclid, with more background and images.

Background, current developments, soon actual sky observation data! 💫🕳️🌀✨🌙☄️

#astrodon #astronomy #ESAEuclid #DarkEnergy #DarkMatter #cosmology

We would like to welcome our 700th follower 🏃‍♂️ and take the opportunity to point again at:

* The #EuclidConsortium website: https://www.euclid-ec.org

*#ESA's #Euclid site: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Euclid

Those sites provide an increasing amount of background information, updates, and - at some point not too far in the future - actual sky observation data! 💫🕳️🌀✨🌙☄️

#astrodon #ESAEuclid #DarkEnergy #DarkMatter #cosmology

Have you taken a look 👀 at our #EuclidConsortium website yet? You can find a primer on #ESAEuclid's instrumentation 🔭 , on the #cosmology questions we will study, as well as a glimpse into all the fields of #astronomy ✨ that the #Euclid data will also provide with an unprecented treasure trove of data.

👉 https://www.euclid-ec.org/

The #EuclidConsortium would like to thank everyone at #ESA and #SpaceX making the launch of #ESAEuclid possible on this short timescale.

1 year ago we didn't have a launcher - as of today the #EuclidMission is on its way to L2 and great science ahead!

Congratulations @ec_euclid on the successful launch and separation of the #EuclidSpaceTelescope !!! I think any time something you've worked on (or care deeply about) launches into space, this is when you can't help but breathe a sigh of relief. Good luck with the hard work of spacecraft and instrument checkout! I can't wait to see what #ESAEuclid teaches us about dark matter and dark energy!
#astronomy #Euclid #EuclidMission #EuclidConsortium

For those following the #EuclidMission launch development. It looks like the hashtags #Euclid #EuclidConsortium and #EuclidSpaceTelescope are also in use. It appears that @ec_euclid is the official account for the consortium.

With the launch 🚀 hour of #ESAEuclid drawing near (today, 1 July, 15:11 UTC, 17:11 CEST, 11:11 am EDT) being very close we wanted to tell all people in the #EuclidConsortium, #ESA, industry, as well as the funding agencies, and all supporting institutions:

Thank you! ♥️🙌🫂👍🏼

Looking back, designing and building this challenging mission over more than a decade is an amazing achievement that was only possible by hundreds and thousands of people giving their best!

I've spent more than 13 years as a "stowaway" on the #ESA #euclid cosmology mission, as deputy-lead and now lead of the Exoplanet Science Working Group. We've been designing ways in which Euclid can be used for exoplanet science, in addition to its primary cosmology science. In a few hours time it will launch, so it is a nerve wracking and exciting time for all #euclidconsortium members. #BonVoyage Euclid - may your journey to Earth-Sun L2 be boringly uneventful!
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/europes-euclid-space-telescope-is-launching-a-new-era-in-studies-of-the-dark-universe/

What is #ESAEuclid? This is how Euclid engineers and scientists describe it:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Fwalv0fzkNo

(2️⃣ days to 🚀 launch 😬)

#EuclidConsortium #ESA #DarkMatter #DarkEnergy

Did you ask yourself: "What is #Euclid, actually?"

Well, to get an answer we asked this question to scientists and engineers in the #EuclidConsortium: "What is Euclid?"

👉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwalv0fzkNo

#ESAEuclid #EuclidMission #EuclidConsortium

The #EuclidConsortium meeting in Copenhagen was a great success in many ways, but I did fail to persuade any of my colleagues of the delights of having pickled herring for breakfast.

I coaxed or encouraged my #Euclid team from #MPIA in #Heidelberg to attend the #EuclidConsortium meeting #Copenhagen travelling by train.

Nominal: ~11h
4 people, 4 different train connections. Delays: +15 min, +1:30 hours, +3:30 hours, +4 hours.

This is unacceptable!

I guess this must be the place... #euclidcopenhagen2023 #euclid #EuclidConsortium

(Re-post)

Our new #EuclidConsortium website will be our main hub for communicating news & information about the #EuclidMission to the world.

Do you want a primer on the mission? Go to our Mission tab and read about the telescope, instruments, surveys, and simulations.

https://www.euclid-ec.org

#Euclid #ESAEuclid #CosmicMystery #DarkEnergy #DarkMatter

Our contractual launch window with #SpaceX opens in 15 day, July 1st!

While we are waiting for a confirmation of the actual launch date in the next days, here's a description of what we are actually launching: the #Euclid #spacecraft, its #payload, the #telescope, and our two #instruments #VIS and #NISP.

https://www.euclid-ec.org/public/mission/

#ESA #ESAEuclid #EuclidMission #CosmicMystery #EuclidConsortium

Our new #EuclidConsortium website will be our main hub for communicating news & information about the #EuclidMission to the world.

Do you want a primer on the mission? Go to our Mission tab and read about the telescope, instruments, surveys, and simulations.

https://www.euclid-ec.org

#Euclid #ESAEuclid #CosmicMystery #DarkEnergy #DarkMatter

It really feels good to successfully have launched the new #EuclidConsortium @ec_euclid #website earlier this week. The original was from ~2011 with few updates over the years. Now a lot of work went into restructuring for different audiences, updates or rewrites for all pages, and of course a layout facelift.

And don't forget our #Blog that will start regularly putting out news, views, and insight into the project and the people making it reality.

https://www.euclid-ec.org

#ESAEuclid #Euclid

In July we will launch the #Euclid #spacecraft, but this week we already re-launched our #EuclidConsortium website:

https://www.euclid-ec.org

It has been completely overhauled and now provides up-to-date primers on science, mission information, a Blog, press material, and a growing set of images. Visit us!

#ESAEuclid #EuclidMission #DarkEnergy #DarkMatter

Happy to announce that the website of the #EuclidConsortium (@ec_euclid) has been re-launched with a complete structural, technical, and - most important - content overhaul: https://euclid-ec.org

For everything #EuclidMission #Euclid please have a look, there'll be blog-posts, infos or scientists and press, growing image galleries and so forth.

#ESAEuclid #DarkEnergy #DarkMatter #DarkUniverse #ReLaunchDay

20 days exactly until opening of #Euclid's contractual launch window. 8 days until @ec_euclid annual meeting in Copenhagen. Less than half a year until we'll have science data.

And 1 day until we relaunch the
#EuclidConsortium website!

#Yeah #wow #scary

#ESA #ESAEuclid #EuclidMission #DarkEnergy #DarkMatter