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Euclid is a dark energy hunter, but its nets snagged 164 supernovae and their secrets.
The Euclidspace telescope works like a security camera in a dark hangar: its job is to catch traces of an invisible force, dark energy, that warps the universe. But instead, it spotted 164 bright sparks — supernova, explosions of dying stars. Scientists measured their glow in different colors (photometry) and saw something unexpected.
One supernova was caught 15 days before its peak, in the infrared range, where no one expected it. Another, defying the usual script, shone 436 days after the explosion, when other telescopes had already lost sight of it. Euclid’s infrared lens cuts through cosmic dust like a flashlight through fog, revealing galaxy that were previously thought invisible — it’s precisely in them that these flashes were hiding.
Now, as the telescope begins surveying vast swaths of sky, the count of discoveries will soar into the thousands. The dark energy hunter is turning into a chronicler of stellar catastrophes.
Deep images from Euclid reveal galaxies where supernovae exploded, in places where ground-based telescopes saw only emptiness — as if a camera suddenly unveils an invisible house.
