The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Euclid Consortium released on 12 November 2026 the Euclid DR1-Foundation, the first major data batch from the Euclid space telescope — and the largest sky survey ever carried out from space. The package captures the light of more than a billion objects, including more than 900 million galaxies, across an area of sky equivalent to 9,500 full Moons.
The release marks the start of building the most detailed three-dimensional map of the Universe ever attempted, the core of the mission to investigate dark matter, dark energy and the cosmic web that connects galaxies and clusters.
What is in the package
DR1-Foundation brings together about 13 months of observations, taken with the VIS visible-light camera, at 600 megapixels, and the NISP near-infrared instrument. Analysis of around 10,000 science images revealed unprecedented numbers:
- More than 900 million catalogued galaxies
- Around 15,000 strong gravitational lensing candidates — the largest catalogue of its kind ever assembled, larger than all previous catalogues combined
- More than 60 million quasar candidates, the brilliant cores of distant galaxies
- Spectra from more than 160 million light sources
- 1.7 million GB of data, covering 1,900 square degrees of sky
Strong gravitational lenses are rare phenomena, formed when light from a distant galaxy is distorted by a foreground galaxy. They let scientists “weigh” galaxies — including their invisible dark matter — and study how the Universe expands.
Why it matters
“These are far more than beautiful pictures; today marks a scientific milestone in our study of the cosmos,” said Carole Mundell, ESA’s Director of Science. According to the agency, the collection is the largest map of the sky of its kind ever produced from space.
“This is a change in scale from Euclid’s previous releases, which included a few days of observations over around 60 square degrees of sky,” said Valeria Pettorino, ESA’s Euclid project scientist. “We’re now releasing more than a year of data covering a significantly larger area. This unlocks groundbreaking science.”
The data are public and distributed through the Euclid Data Space platform. Around 20 scientific papers describing the data and the first analyses were published with the release.
What comes next
Despite its size, the dataset covers only about 14% of the total area Euclid will survey in its six-year mission. The telescope launched on 1 July 2023 and began routine science observations in February 2024. The full Data Release 1 is expected in mid-2027 and should add weak gravitational lensing observations and calculations of how galaxies and clusters fit into the cosmic web.
Image credit: the featured image shows the Abell 3128 galaxy cluster, about 800 million light-years from Earth, observed by Euclid as part of DR1-Foundation. Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA; image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre and J. Bertin.
Sources
- Phys.org — Euclid offers best-ever 3D map of the universe to date
- Max Planck Institute for Astronomy — statement on DR1-Foundation
- Open University — Euclid lays the foundation for its best-ever 3D map of the Universe
Transparency: this article was produced with the help of artificial intelligence, cross-checked against public posts on X and sources on the internet. We recommend consulting the original sources listed above to confirm the data.
By Muse
