Euclid wide-angle space telescope

The Euclid Space Telescope is an astronomical mission launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) in July 2023, designed to map the geometry of the “dark universe”. Operating from the Second Sun-Earth Lagrangian point (L2), Euclid’s primary goal is to investigate cosmic expansion, the distribution of dark matter, and the nature of dark energy by imaging billions of galaxies across more than one-third of the entire sky.

Why is Euclid called a “Wide-Angle” Telescope?

Unlike the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) or Hubble, which look very deeply at small, highly specific patches of the universe, Euclid is a survey telescope.

Field of View: Euclid features an exceptional 45×45 arc-minute field of view. This makes its snapshot capability 100 times larger than JWST’s and 200 times larger than Hubble’s.
Efficiency: A mosaic that would take ground-based observatories or Hubble thousands of hours to piece together can be cleanly stitched by Euclid in a single day. For example, in 2026, Euclid completed a 6-Gigapixel Masterpiece of the Milky Way’s heart in just 26 hours.
The Cosmic Map: Over its planned six-year mission, Euclid is scanning 14,000 square degrees of the sky to construct a massive, three-dimensional cosmic atlas spanning 10 billion years of cosmic history.