The EuropeanSpaceAgency's Euclid mission was launched on July 1, 2023, with contributions from NASA. The space telescope is performing as expected after traveling nearly 1 million miles to the observation point.

The spiral galaxy above, also known as the "Hidden Galaxy," is the first of five images released from the Euclid mission. Located about 11 million light-years from Earth, the galaxy lies behind a crowd of dust in the Milky Way. Euclid can peer through the dust to study it using a near-infrared instrument. "The first images from Euclid mark the beginning of a new era in the study of dark matter and dark energy," said Mike Seiffert, Euclid project scientist at NASAAJPL. NASA teams will join Euclid scientists to study dark energy, dark matter and galaxy evolution in space.

Picture description:

A large spiral galaxy in white/pink is visible face to face in the center of this square astronomical image. The galaxy takes up almost the entire image and appears whiter at its centre, where there are more stars. Its spiral arms extend across the image and appear fainter at the edges. The entire image is dotted with stars in colors ranging from blue to white to yellow to red on a black space background. Blue stars are younger, red stars are older. A few of the stars are slightly larger than others and have six diffraction spikes.