Peering into the Heart of Darkness

This week the European Space Agency released the first full-color images from the Euclid telescope. Euclid is a space telescope (situated in a halo orbit at an average distance of 1.5 million kilometers beyond Earth's orbit) which has been tasked to explore dark energy and dark matter.

The telescope is capturing highly detailed astronomical images across a large area of the sky. The first five images, released earlier this week, demonstrate Euclid's ability to capture razor-sharp details even when zooming in on very distant galaxies. And you actually can zoom into each of these first five images yourself thanks to ESA's interactive map of each image.

If you click on the header image on each of these five dedicated ESA pages you can view an interactive map of the selected image, allowing you to "zoom into the Universe through Euclid's eyes":

Euclid’s view of the Perseus cluster of galaxies
Euclid’s view of spiral galaxy IC 342
Euclid’s view of irregular galaxy NGC 6822
Euclid’s view of the Horsehead Nebula
Euclid’s view of globular cluster NGC 6397

(remember to click on the mast head image on each page to open the interactive map)

I've also read rave reviews this week about the New York Times's A Guide to the James Webb Telescope. Unfortunately this article is locked behind a paywall.