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
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
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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This is an artist impression of how Euclid scans across the night sky using a 'step-and-stare' method, combining separate measurements to form the largest cosmological survey ever conducted in the visible and near-infrared.
Each time Euclid 'stares', its telescope points to a position in the sky, performing imaging and spectroscopic measurements on an area of approximately 0.5 deg² around this position. After each stare, the telescope shifts (or 'steps') to a new position.
The instruments will scan over a total of around 35% of the sky. This is the largest area that includes a complete detection of the galaxies necessary for Euclid’s cosmological studies. The rest of the sky is dominated by the high density of bright stars in our galaxy, and by the dust in the plane of our Solar System, which both disturb the cosmology observations.
Click here for an animated version of this image.