P. Schneider

In Euclid's deep fields, stars flare up that were not in any catalog. A telescope built to map dark matter has worked like a camera trap: one frame, and a cosmic explosion is already on record.

Light from a distant galaxy travels across the universe, passing through vast clumps of dark and ordinary matter. Their gravity slightly bends the path of the rays, like a river's current flowing around invisible boulders. In images, this shows up as a barely noticeable elongation of galaxy shapes, as if they were stretched on an invisible frame.