This image displays an area of the mosaic released by ESA’s Euclid space telescope on 15 October 2024. The area is zoomed in three times compared to the large mosaic. This patch of the Southern Sky shows numerous stars in our own Milky Way, and many galaxies beyond. Thanks to its visible and infrared cameras, Euclid captures the stars in their various colours: red stars are colder, and white/blue stars are hotter. On the right of the image, galaxy cluster Abell 3381 is visible as a string of galaxies.

Technical details: This colour image was obtained by combining VIS data and NISP photometry in Y and H bands. VIS and NISP enable observing astronomical sources in four different wavelength ranges. Aesthetics choices led to the selection of three out of these four bands to be cast onto the traditional Red-Green-Blue colour channels used to represent images on our digital screens (RGB). The blue, green, red channels capture the Universe seen by Euclid around the wavelength 0.7, 1.1, and 1.7 micron respectively. In the image, the stars have six prominent spikes due to how light interacts with the optical system of the telescope in the process of diffraction.

Image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi