Astronomers at Malta’s Institute of Space Sciences and Astronomy (ISSA) this week watched the first images emerging from the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope with an extra dose of pride knowing one of its members had contributed to this mission.

Maltese astrophysicist Ian Fenech Conti did his PhD on the development of algorithms used for the optical modelling of the Euclid telescope in collaboration with Prof. Lance Miller from the University of Oxford. His work was incorporated into the telescope which revealed razor-sharp astronomical images in colour across such a large patch of the sky, which have never been seen before.

This contribution earned Fenech Conti and the team he worked with the Euclid Special Talent And Recognition (STAR) Prize for the best team project, a notable achievement since the Euclid Consortium is made up of approximately 1500 active participants.

“After many years of hard work and collaborative achievement, the sheer joy of witnessing the first tangible images from the Euclid space telescope is indescribable. It's a proud moment for all of us, knowing that our small but significant contributions will play an integral part in bringing the cosmos into sharper focus over the next decade,” Fenech Conti said.

Euclid’s view of spiral galaxy IC 342. ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

His optics modelling was particularly relevant to one of the most significant science cases of Euclid’s mission – namely that of weak gravitational lensing.

Weak gravitational lensing occurs due to the bending of light around massive objects such as clusters of galaxies. As the light bends through these clusters of galaxies, the shapes of background galaxies are distorted and the precise measurements of these distortions allows scientists to measure and map the dark matter distribution within these clusters of galaxies. 

The Euclid telescope — named after the ancient Greek mathematician — was launched in July onboard a SpaceX rocket from the US, and over the next six years it will observe the shapes, distances and motions of billions of galaxies to create the largest cosmic 3D map ever made. 

Also involved in Euclid are Prof. Kristian Zarb Adami, who coordinates the work between the University of Oxford and Malta to ensure the optics and the distortions are characterised well enough to carry out the galaxy shape measurements; and Prof. Alessio Magro, director of ISSA, who brings high-performance computing techniques to carry out the shape measurements in an efficient and accurate manner.

According to the ESA, what makes Euclid’s view of the cosmos special is its ability to create a remarkably sharp visible and infrared image across a huge part of the sky in just one sitting. These surveys will be fundamental in helping understand the expansion and acceleration of the universe, and the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

After the first images were released on Tuesday, ESA director of science Carole Mundell said: “Euclid will make a leap in our understanding of the cosmos as a whole, and these exquisite Euclid images show that the mission is ready to help answer one of the greatest mysteries of modern physics.”