Euclid Stares at the Galactic Bulge

Time for another update from ESA’S Euclid Space Mission: the largest and most detailed photo ever made of our Galactic centre in visible light was taken by the Euclid mission. For just one day (23rd March 2025), Euclid turned its gaze towards the extremely bright inner region of our Milky Way galaxy, known as the galactic bulge. This extraordinary picture is not part of the Euclid’s main cosmological survey, which is designed to look at objects far outside our own Galaxy, but was made in response to special request came from astronomers who were after what Euclid does best: capturing large areas of the sky in crisp detail. Packed with more than 60 million stars, this image opens the door for scientists to confirm the existence of any exoplanet found in this region and measure its mass using tiny changes in starlight over time. Designed to observe billions of faraway galaxies, the space telescope’s visible light camera is sensitive enough to tell apart individual stars in our…