ESA Space Science

ESA is releasing a new set of full-colour images captured by the space telescope Euclid. Follow a broadcast of the reveal on Thursday 23 May at 11:00 BST / 12:00 CEST.

Five new portraits of our cosmos were captured during Euclid’s early observations phase, each revealing amazing new science. Euclid’s ability to unravel the secrets of the cosmos is something you will not want to miss.

An international team of astronomers have used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to find evidence for an ongoing merger of two galaxies and their massive black holes when the Universe was only 740 million years old. This marks the most distant detection of a black hole merger ever obtained and the first time that this phenomenon has been detected so early in the Universe.

Over the weekend of 10–12 May 2024, Earth was struck by the largest solar storm in more than a decade. While many of us enjoyed colourful auroras lighting up Earth’s protective atmosphere, spacecraft had to endure being buffeted by incredibly strong solar winds and electromagnetic radiation.  

Positioned between the Sun and Earth, the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) caught the entire solar outburst on camera. The Sun can be seen spewing out clouds of particles, with an extremely large burst sent to Earth on 11 May. The bright spots on the left and right are Jupiter and Venus. 

This video was taken by SOHO’s LASCO instrument, a coronagraph made up of a telescope with a disc blocking the centre of view. By blocking out the direct light coming from the Sun, the instrument can see light from the surrounding corona.  

SOHO is not the only ESA spacecraft studying solar activity and space weather. ESA’s Directorates of Science, Human and Robotic Exploration, Earth Observation, Operations, and Technology, Engineering and Quality all have missions and/or other activities directly connected with this topic. Together, they form the ESA Heliophysics observatory or more musically, ESA’s Heliophysics Orchestra.  

Researchers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope may have detected atmospheric gases surrounding 55 Cancri e, a hot rocky exoplanet 41 light-years from Earth. This is the best evidence to date for the existence of a rocky planet atmosphere outside our Solar System.

This otherworldly, ever-changing landscape is what the Sun looks like up close. ESA's Solar Orbiter filmed the transition from the Sun's lower atmosphere to the much hotter outer corona. The hair-like structures are made of charged gas (plasma), following magnetic field lines emerging from the Sun's interior.

The brightest regions are around one million degrees Celsius, while cooler material looks dark as it absorbs radiation. 

This video was recorded on 27 September 2023 by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument on Solar Orbiter. At the time, the spacecraft was at roughly a third of the Earth’s distance from the Sun, heading for a closest approach of 43 million km on 7 October.

On the same day that this video was recorded, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe skimmed just 7.26 million km from the solar surface. Rather than directly imaging the Sun, Parker measures particles and the magnetic field in the Sun’s corona and in the solar wind. This was a perfect opportunity for the two missions to team up, with ESA-led Solar Orbiter’s remote-sensing instruments observing the source region of the solar wind that would subsequently flow past Parker Solar Probe.

Spot the moss, spicules, eruption and rain

Lower left corner: An intriguing feature visible throughout this movie is the bright gas that makes delicate, lace-like patterns across the Sun. This is called coronal ‘moss’. It usually appears around the base of large coronal loops that are too hot or too tenuous to be seen with the chosen instrument settings.

On the solar horizon: Spires of gas, known as spicules, reach up from the Sun’s chromosphere. These can reach up to a height of 10 000 km.

Centre around 0:22: A small eruption in the centre of the field of view, with cooler material being lifted upwards before mostly falling back down. Don’t be fooled by the use of â€˜small’ here: this eruption is bigger than Earth!

Centre-left around 0:30: ‘Cool’ coronal rain (probably less than 10 000 Â°C) looks dark against the bright background of large coronal loops (around one million degrees). The rain is made of higher-density clumps of plasma that fall back towards the Sun under the influence of gravity.

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ESA ensures a ride into space for its Smile mission, with Arianespace signing up to launch the spacecraft on a Vega-C rocket

ESA’s Proba-2 captured two partial solar eclipses on 8 April 2024. 

A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, totally or partially blocking the Sun from Earth’s point of view. On 8 April, lucky viewers across North America witnessed the Moon blocking out the Sun in its entirety for a few minutes, while those north and south of the ‘total eclipse path’ witnessed a partial eclipse.  

Throughout the eclipse period, the Moon crossed Proba-2’s field of view twice, appearing as a partial solar eclipse. The satellite flies around 700 km above Earth’s surface in what is called a Sun-synchronous orbit, each orbit lasting around 100 minutes.  

The video was produced from images taken by Proba-2’s SWAP telescope, which observes the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light. At these wavelengths, the turbulent nature of the Sun's surface and corona – the Sun's extended atmosphere – become visible. These measurements have to be made from space, because Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t allow such short wavelengths of light to pass through. 

A total solar eclipse provides a unique opportunity to see the Sun’s corona from Earth's surface, using visible light. As the Moon blocks most of the Sun’s bright light, the faint corona can be discerned. By comparing the SWAP ultraviolet images to what is seen by (visible light) telescopes on Earth, we can learn about the temperature and behaviour of different structures in the corona.  

Other solar missions also made the most of the unique measurement opportunities provided by the eclipse. For example, ESA’s Solar Orbiter was positioned close to the Sun and at a 90-degree angle from Earth’s view throughout the eclipse. This allowed it to complement Earth-based observations by monitoring the Sun’s corona side-on, including any solar eruptions pointing in Earth’s direction.

During a solar eclipse the Earth is plunged into darkness and the Sun’s ghostly atmosphere becomes visible. Scientists travel the globe to experience total solar eclipses, which occur for just a few minutes at a time every 18 months or so. But what exactly causes solar eclipses, and how do scientists try to make their own, including with ESA’s new Proba-3 mission?

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The Euclid mission team was awarded this year’s Space Achievement Award by the Space Foundation, a non-profit organisation founded in 1983 to foster collaboration across the global space community. ESA Director General, Josef Aschbacher (centre), and ESA Director of Science, Carole Mundell (right), collected the prize at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, USA, on 8 April at 18:00 MDT (9 April at 2:00 CEST).

The Space Foundation recognised the partnership between ESA and the Euclid Consortium for their forward-thinking approach to global collaboration and team work to advance humankind’s understanding of the Universe.

Euclid is a scientific endeavour involving more than 300 institutes from 13 European countries and the USA, Canada and Japan. It has been made possible by the the work and dedication of more than 3500 people and thanks to the expertise of 80 companies from 21 countries.

Euclid’s quest is to uncover the nature of two mysterious components of our Universe: dark matter and dark energy. The mission will chart how the Universe has expanded and how large-scale structure is distributed across space and time. To achieve these ambitious goals, the space telescope will create the largest, most accurate 3D map of the Universe ever produced across 10 billion years of cosmic time.

Euclid is a European mission, built and operated by ESA, with contributions from NASA. The Member States of ESA together with the Euclid Consortium are responsible for providing the scientific instruments and scientific data analysis. ESA selected Thales Alenia Space as prime contractor for the construction of the satellite and its service module, with Airbus Defence and Space chosen to develop the payload module, including the telescope. NASA provided the detectors of the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer, NISP. Euclid is a medium-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision Programme.

Image source: Space Foundation

For Gaia’s 10-year anniversary, ESA champion Galactic Chloé and the ESA Gaia team are very happy to collaborate to tell the space mission's story. From paper calculations, to the launch, and to her third data release last year, discover three of the mission's most surprising discoveries and celebrate with us Gaia’s birthday with this video produced by Galactic Studios! 

Discover the video on Youtube