When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CFHT, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre and E. Bertin (CEA Paris-Saclay)In 2025, the European Space Agency dark universe detective spacecraft Euclid turned its attention to the heart of the Milky Way for just 26 hours. In just over one day, Euclid was able to create the largest and most detailed photo of this region of our galaxy ever made.The image, packed with 60 million stars, could help scientists hunt for extrasolar planets, exoplanets, in this region known as the galactic bulge. Euclid is designed to study dark energy, the mysterious force that drives the accelerating expansion of the universe, by studying distant galaxies. That means the space telescope is powerful enough to distinguish individual stars in the central bulge of the Milky Way. Other telescopes fail to do this because they are too blinded by the densely packed stars in this region.The largest high-resolution photo ever made of our Milky Way galaxy’s center in visible light. It was taken on March 23, 2025 by the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope. | Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CFHT, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre and E. Bertin (CEA Paris-Saclay)Euclid was requested to monitor the central bulge of the Milky Way to assist astronomers in the hunt for exoplanets because this is the perfect region for so-called “microlensing” events to occur.AdvertisementAdvertisement”To catch microlensing, you need to observe parts of the sky that are crowded with stars, such as close to the center of our galaxy,” team leader Jean-Philippe Beaulieu of the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris in France said in a statement.Microlensing is a weak form of gravitational lensing that occurs when objects with mass cause the very fabric of space to warp. When light from a background source passes through this warping of space, its path is curved. This can be used to study the background source; for example, scientists have used it to great effect with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to study some of the most distant and early galaxies. However, the curvature of light from background sources can also be used to detect faint objects like planets.The location of Euclid’s new image of the galactic bulge is visible on Gaia’s map of the entire sky. | Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CFHT, ESA/Gaia/DPAC,image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre and E. Bertin (CEA Paris-Saclay)Spotting planets using microlensing requires one star to pass in front of another and act as a gravitational lens. The presence of a planet causes a tiny perturbation in the lensing of light from the background star. It’s a small effect, but one that has been used very effectively in …
