The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
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Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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Two dozen distant galaxies that are undergoing a process of intense evolution - either merging to larger ones or reaching their final shape - have been detected by a team of French astronomers using ESA's Infrared Space Observatory (ISO). These are the first individual objects know to contribute their energy to the Cosmic Infrared Background, a radiation that fills the entire Universe. The newly-found galaxies are indeed like the 'pattern' in this cosmic wallpaper. The oval-shaped image at top-left is a map of the infrared sky obtained by the earlier IRAS satellite. It shows in red the emission from objects in our own Galaxy; this acts like a curtain making it difficult for astronomers to see through. For this observation, ISO was pointed at a region of the southern hemisphere called the Marano Fields, which is especially clean of emission from foreground sources. The new population of galaxies now identified emit so faintly that astronomers could only detect them by using the ISOPHOT spectrophotometer ISO, the best and most sensitive infrared space telescope so far. However, astronomers consider these galaxies to be the tip of the iceberg and expect to find many more sources when searching with more sensitive instrument, such as the FIRST telescope already planned by ESA as ISO's successor. [Image Date: 24-07-98] [98.07.001-001]