By GB News (World News) | Created at 2026-06-24 19:59:12 | Updated at 2026-06-24 20:51:37
52 minutes ago
A space telescope originally designed to probe the universe's dark forces has produced the most detailed and expansive image ever captured of visible light emanating from the Milky Way's core.
The European Space Agency's Euclid probe photographed more than 60 million individual stars in the densely packed galactic bulge, a region where most instruments struggle to distinguish separate celestial bodies.
Scientists have hailed the remarkable snapshot as the beginning of a transformative period for planetary research beyond our solar system.
The breakthrough promises to dramatically expand humanity's catalogue of known worlds orbiting distant stars throughout the galaxy.
Dr Eamonn Kerins, an astrophysicist at the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, described the telescope's unexpected capabilities.
"It was never built with this science in mind, but it has proved to be a superb facility for the work," he said.
The researcher emphasised the scale of what lies ahead for planetary hunters.
"This data fires the starting pistol in a new age of exoplanet discovery, where we go from knowing about 6,000 exoplanets to finding more than 100,000 across the galaxy," Dr Kerins added.
More than 60 million individual stars were captured by The European Space Agency's Euclid probe
NASA
The Euclid instrument's camera possesses the rare sensitivity required to isolate individual stars within the crowded galactic centre.
The €1billion telescope, equivalent to approximately £862million, was sent into orbit in 2023 with the primary mission of constructing the most precise three-dimensional map of the cosmos ever assembled.
Astronomers directed the probe towards the Milky Way's heart in March of the previous year, accumulating 26 hours of continuous observation time.
The resulting image comprises a mosaic assembled from nine separate pointings using the spacecraft's visible light camera, with each individual pointing spanning an area of sky exceeding the full moon's apparent size.
The images were able to captured after the telescope was pointed at the centre of the Milky Way for 26 hours 
NASA
Detecting distant worlds relies partly on a phenomenon called microlensing, where a nearer star's gravitational field bends light from a more distant star, causing temporary brightening.
When a planet circles the nearer star, its gravitational pull creates an additional spike in this brightening effect.
Nasa intends to deploy its Nancy Grace Roman space telescope in August.
It was named in honour of the agency's first chief astronomer who passed away in 2018.
Researchers anticipate this mission will identify roughly 1,500 exoplanets through microlensing observations.
They also expect the mission to detect approximately 100,000 additional worlds as they transit across their host stars.
The Euclid imagery will prove invaluable for this work, revealing stellar positions before they overlap and enabling astronomers to calculate movement speeds.
"The Euclid snapshot will improve those measurements possibly by up to a factor of three, which for a single image is quite something," Dr Kerins noted.
