(The Euclid spacecraft will be launched via SpaceX on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in July 2023, but no further details are publicly available right now.)
Archive for Euclid
Euclid Launch Window Update!
Posted in Euclid, The Universe and Stuff with tags Euclid on April 26, 2023 by telescoperEuclid in a Nutshell
Posted in Euclid, Literature, The Universe and Stuff with tags Cosmology, Euclid, European Space Agency, Hamlet, Nutshell on February 21, 2023 by telescoperO God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
myself a king of infinite space…
Hamlet, Act 2, Scene II.
It Hamlet rather than Euclid who said those words, but they came into my mind when I saw the latest nice video about the Euclid Mission from the European Space Agency, entitled Euclid in a Nutshell. It’s a quick one-minute summary of of what the mission is for and what it will do:
The text with the video reads:
ESA’s Euclid mission is designed to explore the composition and evolution of the dark Universe. The space telescope will create a great map of the large-scale structure of the Universe across space and time by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, across more than a third of the sky. Euclid will explore how the Universe has expanded and how structure has formed over cosmic history, revealing more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter.
Euclid is a fully European mission, built and operated by ESA, with contributions from NASA. The Euclid Consortium – consisting of more than 2000 scientists from 300 institutes in 13 European countries, the US, Canada and Japan – provided the scientific instruments and scientific data analysis. ESA selected Thales Alenia Space as prime contractor for the construction of the satellite and its Service Module, with Airbus Defence and Space chosen to develop the Payload Module, including the telescope. NASA provided the near-infrared detectors of the NISP instrument.
A Backronym for Euclid?
Posted in Euclid, mathematics, Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags Acronyms, Edna St Vincent Millay, Euclid, European Space Agency, geometry on February 13, 2023 by telescoper
As a fully paid-up member of the Campaign for the Rejection of Acronymic Practices I was pleased to see the top brass in the Euclid Consortium issue instructions that encourage authors to limit their use of acronyms in official technical documents. Acronyms are widely used in the names of astronomical instruments and surveys. Take BOOMERanG (Balloon Observations Of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation And Geophysics) and HIPPARCOS (HIgh Precision PARallax COllecting Satellite) to name just two. A much longer list can be found here.
I’m very pleased that the name of the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission is not an acronym. It is actually named after Euclid the Greek mathematician widely regarded as the father of geometry. Quite a few people who have asked me have been surprised that Euclid is not an acronym so I thought it might be fun to challenge my readers – both of them – to construct an appropriate backronym i.e. an acronym formed by expanding the name Euclid into the words of a phrase describing the Euclid mission. The best I’ve seen so far is:
Exploring the Universe with Cosmic Lensing to Identify Dark energy
But Euclid doesn’t just use Cosmic Lensing so I don’t think it’s entirely satisfactory. Anyway, your suggestions are welcome via the box below.
While you’re thinking, here is the best poetic description I have found (from Edna St Vincent Millay):
Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage...
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics
Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags Almanac, arXiv, arXiv:2210.13260, Euclid, Masked Sky, weak gravitational lensing on February 8, 2023 by telescoperWe’re on a bit of a roll at the Open Journal of Astrophysics and it’s time to announce yet another paper. We actually published this one yesterday (7th February 2023), which makes it two in two days. I don’t think we’ll keep up that rate but we have seen a big increase in submissions recently and these are working their way through the system very nicely. We aim to publish accepted papers within a day of the revised version appearing on arXiv.
The latest paper is the 6th paper in Volume 6 (2023) as well as the 71st in all. This one is another one for the folder marked Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. The title is “Almanac: Weak Lensing power spectra and map inference on the masked sphere”. The nub of the problem addressed by this paper is that the usual statistical analysis of data presented in projection on the sky involves spherical harmonics, which are orthogonal functions on the celestial sphere, but when the sky is not completely covered (i.e. part of it is masked), these functions are not orthogonal on what remains.
The authors of this paper are Arthur Loureiro (University of Edinburgh, UK), Lorne Whiteway (University College London, UK), Elena Selentin (Leiden University, NL), Javier Silva Lafaurie (Leiden University, NL), Andrew Jaffe (Imperial College London, UK) and Alan Heavens (Imperial College London, UK)
Here is a screen grab of the overlay which includes the abstract:
You can click on the image of the overlay to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on the arXiv here.
How Euclid will scan the sky
Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags Cosmology, ESA, Euclid, European Space Agency, step-and-stare, survey on February 7, 2023 by telescoperA missive from Euclid High Command arrived yesterday confirming that ESA’s Euclid mission would be launched by SpaceX on a Falcon 9 rocket on a date between July 1st and July 30 (2023). It will soon be time to start getting nervous!
I also noticed that another video has appeared on the Euclid public website showing how the satellite will work. It’s not a traditional general-purpose observatory on which different users bid for time to observe different objects (as is the case for JWST, for example) but a dedicated mission that will compile a systematic survey with very specific science goals.
Euclid scans across the sky using a ‘step-and-stare’ method, combining separate measurements to form the largest cosmological survey ever conducted in the visible and near-infrared. Each time Euclid ‘stares’, its telescope points to a position in the sky, performing imaging and spectroscopic measurements on an area of approximately 0.5 deg² around this position. After each stare, the telescope steps to a new position.
This way the instruments will scan over a total of around 35% of the sky. This is the largest area over which one can guarantee a a complete detection of the galaxies necessary for Euclid’s cosmological studies. The rest of the sky is dominated by the high density of bright stars in our galaxy, and by the dust in the plane of our Solar System, both of which get in the way of the cosmology observations.
I hope this clarifies the situation.
The Euclid Public Website
Posted in Euclid, The Universe and Stuff with tags Cosmology, Dark Energy, dark matter, Euclid, Euclid Consortium, European Space Agency on February 2, 2023 by telescoperWith the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission now scheduled for launch in the 3rd Quarter of 2023 a lot of work has been put in recently in developing the Euclid mission’s public website. For those of you not in the know, there is a summary on the new website:
ESA’s Euclid mission is designed to explore the composition and evolution of the dark Universe. The space telescope will create a great map of the large-scale structure of the Universe across space and time by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, across more than a third of the sky. Euclid will explore how the Universe has expanded and how structure has formed over cosmic history, revealing more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter.
The public website is can be found here. Check it out. Many more stories, pictures and videos will be added over the forthcoming weeks but in the mean time here is a taster animated movie that shows various elements of the Euclid spacecraft, including the telescope, payload module and solar panels.
Even more information about the science to be done with Euclid can be found on the Euclid Consortium website, which is being revamped ahead of the launch.
SpaceX launch confirmed for Euclid
Posted in Biographical, Euclid, The Universe and Stuff with tags Euclid, Euclid Consortium, Falcon 9, SpaceX on December 15, 2022 by telescoper
I’m a bit fragile today. I don’t know why, but it may be connected with our Departmental Christmas partylast night. I’m glad I didn’t have too much to drink. Ahem.
Anyway, in my current condition I only have time for a short post to pass on the news that I today saw official confirmation that, negotiations having been successfully completed, the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission will indeed be launched by SpaceX, on a Falcon 9 rocket.
Various working meetings have been scheduled to start next week between ESA, SpaceX and Thales Alenia Space – Italia (TAS-I, who constructed the vehicle). The launch period is confirmed to be somewhere in the 3rd Quarter of 2023 and may even be as early as 1st July 2023. The actual launch window of one month will be agreed on the 1st of February.
Now there will be intense activity preparing the Euclid vehicle for launch as well as readying the Ground Segment – the bit that collects and processes the data.
The 2023 Annual Euclid Consortium Meeting, scheduled to be in Copenhagen in from 19th to 23rd June will be the last such meeting before the launch. I am very much looking forward to attending it.
SpaceX for Euclid
Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags Ariane 6, Cosmology, Elon Musk, ESA, Euclid, European Space Agency, Falcon-9, SpaceX on October 20, 2022 by telescoperAa few months ago I posted a piece about the European Space Agency’s Euclid Mission which had been due to be launched in 2023 on a Soyuz ST 2-1b rocket. That no longer being possible because of Russian’s invasion of Ukraine, it seemed there would be a lengthy delay in the launch of Euclid, with late 2024 seeming the earliest feasible date for launch on the obvious alternative, the new Ariane 6.
I ended that piece with this:
It seems to me that the best hope for a resolution of this problem would be for ESA to permit the launch of Euclid using something other than Ariane 6, which means using a vehicle supplied by an independent commercial operator. I sincerely hope ESA is able to come up with an imaginative solution to this very serious problem.
In the Dark, 17th June
Well I’ve just read official confirmation that a few hours ago ESA Council has approved the proposal to launch Euclid on a Falcon 9 rocket operated by SpaceX. If all goes well -specifically if the Euclid Consortium member states agree with this move – it might be possible to launch Euclid by the end of 2023. Although I don’t have any firm information about what date is being proposed I believe it could be as soon as July 2023.
Setting aside any personal opinions about Elon Musk, the Falcon 9 has proved to be very reliable, with the latest version having 110 out of 110 successful launches. Euclid will not be in an Earth orbit, like most of the satellites so far launched by SpaceX, but has to be delivered to the 2nd Lagrange Point, L2. That should not pose to much of a difficulty, however.
Guest Post: The Euclid Consortium has an EDI challenge if ESA goes ahead with SpaceX
Posted in Euclid, LGBTQ+, The Universe and Stuff with tags Elon Musk, Euclid, Euclid Consortium, Space X on September 1, 2022 by telescoperThe following is a guest post from Arthur Loureiro who is Euclid Science Ground Segment Senior Scientist at the The University of Edinburgh. Opinions expressed here are personal and do not reflect those of the Euclid Collaboration nor the University of Edinburgh.
This guest post is based on an open letter sent by Arthur Loureiro & Gabriele Mainetti to the Euclid Consortium Diversity Committee.
–o–
According to news outlets, the European Space Agency is considering using Elon Musk’s SpaceX to send the Euclid Space Telescope to L2. SpaceX is seen as an alternative to fill the gap left by the Soyuz spacecraft – removed by Roscosmos as a consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia made its first invasion of Ukraine back in 2014 and, since then, ESA had plans to use the future Ariane 6 rocket to deliver Euclid. But the plan to use Ariane 6 went to space (differently from Euclid) as Ariane Space signed their largest contract ever with… Bezos! The comic book vilan billionaire doesn’t seem to have enough rockets in his back garden. He needs to cut the queue ahead of Euclid to send more space junk low-orbit satellites for Amazon.
So, off to SpaceX we (seem to) go.
The issue is that SpaceX’s CEO is known to be a complicated figure (to say the least!). Musk has attacked multiple times subjects at the core of the Euclid Collaboration’s values. We cannot claim to care for diversity, inclusion, equality, LGBTQIA+ rights, climate change, vaccines, and democracy and close a deal with such a vile figure. Launching the Euclid telescope via SpaceX would mean dumping millions of euros in the pockets of someone who is very vocal against these values.
In case our telescope decides to hitch a $50+M hike in SpaceX’s Falcon 9, the Euclid Collaboration has an EDI challenge ahead.
Personally, as one of the few Latin Americans involved in Euclid, it feels like a slap in the face to know we will be doing business with him. Musk has zero respect for the fragile democracy we have in our southern continent. In 2020, for example, Musk said “We will coup whoever we want. Deal with it” about the coup against the elected president Evo Morales in Bolivia. For context, the coup was mainly motivated by gaining access to Bolivia’s Lithium reserve. I find this statement absurdly disturbing. Reminiscents of a (hopefully) long gone colonial epoch.
I cannot speak for the group, but I suspect the feeling must be similar for the LGBTQIA+ community within Euclid. Musk has consistently and openly attacked the LGBTQIA+ community on multiple fronts. For the (few) women in the Collaboration, I imagine the feeling is of absolute repulse and disgust. On top of other issues Musk has with women, the telescope they have been working for will be (possibly) launched by SpaceX where recent accusations of sexual harassment have been raised against the CEO.
As a collective and diverse group of scientists, engineers, and academics, are we endorsing Musk and his attitudes by signing a multi-million dollar contract with his company?
As a collaboration that endorses the values of EDI, science, and democracy, what are we going to do to mitigate the damage caused by paying this person and company so much money?
How are we going to deal with the bitter taste (to say the least) left for those members of the EC that has been directly or indirectly attacked by Musk and his followers?
Euclid must fly to its final destination at L2. We cannot wait to see all that our Dark Universe mission has to reveal to us! If ESA decides to use Musk’s SpaceX, that is beyond the Euclid Collaboration’s decision power. However, the Collaboration can and must discuss how to avoid being linked in any way, shape or form to this despicable figure before we change from ESA’s Euclid Mission to Elon’s Euclid Mission. Credit to Musk must be avoided at all costs as the cost will be Euclid’s shot at being a diverse and inclusive Collaboration.
Can SpaceX save Euclid?
Posted in Euclid, The Universe and Stuff with tags Ariane 6, Cosmology, Elon Musk, ESA, Euclid, European Space Agency, Falcon 9, SpaceX on July 23, 2022 by telescoperA little over a month ago I posted a piece about the European Space Agency’s Euclid Mission which had been due to be launched in 2023 on a Soyuz ST 2-1b rocket. That no longer being possible because of Russian’s invasion of Ukraine, it seemed there would be a lengthy delay in the launch of Euclid, with late 2024 seeming the earliest feasible date for launch on the obvious alternative, the new Ariane 6.
I ended that piece with this:
It seems to me that the best hope for a resolution of this problem would be for ESA to permit the launch of Euclid using something other than Ariane 6, which means using a vehicle supplied by an independent commercial operator. I sincerely hope ESA is able to come up with an imaginative solution to this very serious problem.
In the Dark, 17th June
I have heard various rumours since then but yesterday I saw a piece by Paris-based astronomer Henry Joy McCracken (a famous name in Ireland) that reveals that a proposal is being actively investigated to launch Euclid on a Falcon 9 rocket operated by Elon Musk’s outfit SpaceX. If all goes well it might be possible to launch Euclid by the end of 2023, and at a fraction of the cost of the alternative Ariane 6-2.
Setting aside any personal opinions about Elon Musk, the Falcon 9 has proved to be very reliable, with the latest version having 110 out of 110 successful launches. Euclid will not be in an Earth orbit, like most of the satellites so far launched by SpaceX, but has to be delivered to the 2nd Lagrange Point, L2. That should not pose to much of a difficulty.
As far as I understand it the decision whether or not this is feasible will be taken later this year after extensive engineering tests, especially to see how Euclid can cope with the spectrum of vibrations generated by Falcon 9. There’s no guarantee this will work out but it might just save a lot of money and a lot of careers.
