Euclid space telescope unveils new images of the cosmos

Paris: A mind boggling number of shining galaxies, a purple and orange star nursery and a spiral galaxy similar to our Milky Way: new images were reve...

Paris: A mind-boggling number of shining galaxies, a purple and orange star nursery and a spiral galaxy similar to our Milky Way: new images were revealed from Europe's Euclid space telescope on Thursday.

It is the second set of images released by the European Space Agency since Euclid launched last year on the first-ever mission to investigate the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

Scientific data from Euclid was also published for the first time in the six-year mission, which aims to use its wide view to chart two billion galaxies across a third of the sky.

Euclid project scientist Rene Laureijs told AFP that he was "personally most excited" about the image of a massive cluster of galaxies called Abell 2390.

The image of the cluster, which is 2.7 billion light years away from Earth, encompasses more than 50,000 galaxies.