Overview
- Euclid was reoriented for a single day to image the Galactic bulge on March 23, 2025, collecting a nine-tile, 26‑hour visible-light mosaic that resolves more than 60 million stars and contains 51 known planetary systems.
- The observation was presented by the European Space Agency on June 24, 2026 and is being released as a high-quality reference dataset for follow-up studies.
- Euclid's visible camera delivers Hubble-like sharpness while covering about 270 times the area per exposure, allowing a wide, high-resolution mosaic that would take ground telescopes many times longer to produce.
- Scientists say the image will serve as a historical baseline for gravitational microlensing work, letting Roman and ground-based teams confirm events and calculate exoplanet masses by comparing future time-series data to Euclid's snapshot.
- Built and operated by ESA with NASA contributions and an international consortium, Euclid will not do long-term monitoring so researchers expect the data to support studies of stellar populations, binaries, dust and exoplanets when combined with other observatories and CFHT color data.