The Institute of Space Sciences shares the satisfaction of the first images sent by the Euclid space telescope, shortly after its launch on July 1, 2023.

The Euclid telescope is equipped with two instruments: VIS, which produces images of the sky in the visible range, consisting of 36 CCDs with a total of 609 Mpixels, and NISP, which explores the universe in the near infrared, consisting of 16 chips with a total of 64 Mpixels, also having spectrograph functionality in the wavelength range between 1 and 2 microns.

“"After more than 11 years of preparation, it is a great joy to see that the Euclid instruments are working properly. However, we still have two more months to wait until the telescope is fully focused and the instruments thermalized and calibrated, so that we can start analyzing the data." – declares Dr. Lucia Popa, Romania's representative on the Euclid Consortium Board.

After the completion of the preparatory phases, starting in November this year, Euclid will send in just a few days a volume of data comparable to the entire production of the Hubble telescope in its 33 years of life.

It should be noted that the two test images presented below were obtained by the two instruments during the satellite's movement towards the Lagrange 2 point, the instruments not being fully focused and calibrated; they have no scientific utility, but demonstrate the impeccable functioning of the systems onboard Euclid.

Romania's participation in the Euclid mission is ensured by the Institute of Space Sciences (ISS), with the support of the Romanian Space Agency (ROSA) and the European Space Agency (ESA).