Euclid (spacecraft)

Euclid

General information
Organization	ESA
Launch date	2019
Mission length	5 years (planned)
Location	Lagrangian point L2
Telescope style	Korsch
Wavelength	550-920 nm (visible) 0.8-1.7  µm (infrared)
Diameter	~1.2 m (3 ft 11 in)
Visible CCD imager
Near IR photometer
Near IR spectrometer
Website	Euclid homepage

Euclid (after the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria, the "Father of Geometry") is a planned space telescope, an M-class mission of the ESA Cosmic Vision 2020-2025, planned to be launched in 2019. Its goal to map the large scale distribution of the dark matter and characterize properties of dark energy.

Originally two, similar proposals were submitted for the call, the Dark Universe Explorer (DUNE, intended to measure effects of weak gravitational lensing) and Spectroscopic All Sky Cosmic Explorer (SPACE, to measure the baryon acoustic oscillations). Both proposals were selected and considered as equally important, and a combined mission was planned enabling cross-checking the results of both missions.

The survey covers 15,000 square degrees (and also has a 40 square degree deep survey), approximately half of the whole sky (not covered by the Milky Way).

The spacecraft uses a 1.2 meter Korsch telescope with three sensors.

• A visible light CCD images the whole field of view down to magnitude 24.5 for measuring gravitational lensing.
• A near infrared photometer measures brightnesses of galaxies in three (Y, J, H) bands
• A spectrometer gathers (infrared) spectra of 108 brighter galaxies than magnitude 22 of each field of view.

History

On October 5, 2011 it was announced that Euclid is one of the two programs ESA has selected to be built.^[1]

References

1. ^ EUCLID Space Mission Selected by European Space Agency

External links

• Euclid homepage
• [1]