{"id":555345,"date":"2026-06-26T14:30:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T14:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/555345\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T14:30:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T14:30:17","slug":"the-largest-most-detailed-image-of-the-milky-ways-heart-shows-60-million-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/555345\/","title":{"rendered":"The Largest, Most Detailed Image of the Milky Way’s ‘Heart’ Shows 60 Million Stars"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Stunning<\/a>Euclid\u2019s capture of our galaxy\u2019s bulge. Credit: ESA<\/p>\n

Euclid <\/a>has taken the largest and most detailed photo ever made of our Milky Way galaxy\u2019s center in visible light, capturing more than 60 million stars in just over a day.<\/p>\n

The image gives astronomers something they have never had at this scale: a clean, early look at the same stars NASA\u2019s Roman <\/a>telescope will soon monitor for hidden planets. As those stars drift and line up in the years ahead, scientists can use Euclid\u2019s snapshot to verify faint planet signals and weigh worlds that may be cold, distant, and nearly impossible to find any other way.<\/p>\n

The Bulge<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Location of Euclid\u2019s survey. Credit: ESA<\/p>\n

Euclid normally looks far beyond the Milky Way. Its main job is to map billions of galaxies and track how dark matter and dark energy shape the universe.<\/p>\n

But on March 23, 2025, astronomers aimed it at the Milky Way\u2019s galactic bulge \u2014 the bright, packed region around the galaxy\u2019s center. In about 26 hours, Euclid\u2019s visible-light camera stitched together nine \u201cpointings,\u201d each covering more sky than the full moon.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Infographic of Euclid\u2019s galactic bulge survey. Credit: ESA<\/p>\n

The result was this sharp, enormous view of stars, nebulae, star clusters, and dark clouds of gas and dust.<\/p>\n

Euclid can separate individual stars in a field where ground-based telescopes struggle with Earth\u2019s atmosphere and overwhelming crowding. ESA says Euclid\u2019s visible-light sharpness is comparable to Hubble\u2019s wide-field camera, but each Euclid pointing covers an area 270 times larger.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was never built with this science in mind,\u201d said Dr. Eamonn Kerins, an astrophysicist at the University of Manchester\u2019s Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, according to The Guardian<\/a>. \u201cBut it has proved to be a superb facility for the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

How a Star Can Reveal a Planet<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Infographic explaining microlensing planet detection. Credit: ESA <\/p>\n

The new image will support a planet-hunting method called microlensing<\/a>. When one star passes in front of another, the nearer star\u2019s gravity bends and brightens the background star\u2019s light. If a planet orbits the nearer star, its gravity adds a small extra wrinkle to that signal.<\/p>\n

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That faint change can reveal a world no telescope can see directly.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo catch microlensing, you need to observe parts of the sky that are crowded with stars, such as close to the centre of our galaxy,\u201d Jean-Philippe Beaulieu of the Institut d\u2019Astrophysique de Paris and the University of Tasmania said in a statement. \u201cDuring the last twenty years,\u00a0almost 300 exoplanets<\/a>\u00a0have been discovered using this technique, all with ground-based telescopes and all towards the centre of our galaxy. This image from Euclid includes 51 known planetary systems\u2014and it will assist in studying many more that will be found.\u201d<\/p>\n

Euclid did not find new planets in this one-day view. A microlensing event usually takes more than 20 days of monitoring. But the image gives astronomers a record of the stars before future alignments.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A nebula found with Euclid. Credit: ESA<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 24 hours, Euclid has already captured the stars involved in all the future microlensing events that the Roman space telescope will detect, but before the stars and planets involved have aligned,\u201d said Natalia Rektsini of the Institut d\u2019Astrophysique de Paris.<\/p>\n

When Roman or another telescope later spots a microlensing event, researchers can compare that data with Euclid\u2019s earlier image, measure how fast the stars moved and use that motion to confirm the planet and calculate its mass.<\/p>\n

The Cold Worlds Microlensing Finds Best<\/p>\n

Many planet-hunting methods favor large, hot planets<\/a> that orbit close to their stars. Microlensing can find colder planets farther out, including worlds more like Uranus or Neptune<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis technique is unbiased, we discover whatever is out there,\u201d Rektsini added. \u201cIt is uniquely suited to discover cold exoplanets. And we expect every star in the Milky Way to host at least one such planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two known systems stand out to the Euclid team.<\/p>\n

OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb<\/a>, found 20 years ago, is an icy world that Dr. Beaulieu compares to a famous frozen planet. \u201c[It\u2019s] a bit like Hoth from Star Wars. After all this time, I\u2019m excited that Euclid might finally allow us to measure its precise mass,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Another system, OGLE-2013-BLG-341Lb<\/a>, contains two stars and a planet. By combining earlier Keck and Hubble observations with Euclid\u2019s new view, scientists may finally separate the stars clearly enough to confirm the planet\u2019s mass.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis data fires the starting pistol in a new age of exoplanet discovery, where we go from knowing about 6,000 exoplanets to finding more than 100,000 across the galaxy,\u201d Kerins said.<\/p>\n

Euclid\u2019s galactic detour may also serve other studies, from brown dwarfs and binary stars to stellar motion and dust in the Milky Way.<\/p>\n

For a mission built to map the invisible scaffolding of the cosmos, its brief look inward has delivered a new way to weigh hidden worlds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Euclid\u2019s capture of our galaxy\u2019s bulge. Credit: ESA Euclid has taken the largest and most detailed photo ever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[237634,18,6145,145456,99106,6123,80757,7443,19,17,138276,1029,133],"class_list":["post-555345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-cold-exoplanets","tag-eire","tag-esa","tag-euclid","tag-euclid-space-telescope","tag-exoplanets","tag-galactic-bulge","tag-galaxy","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-microlensing","tag-milky-way","tag-science"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116816893618041305","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}