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00:03 The James Webb Space Telescope might be the golden child quite literally when it comes
00:07 to new and impressive cosmic imaging technology.
00:10 But the Euclid Space Telescope, which just launched in July, is now sending back its
00:14 first images, and they're also spectacular.
00:16 Still, taking pretty pictures isn't really Euclid's mission.
00:19 It was launched to finally help humankind figure out dark matter and dark energy.
00:24 According to NASA, dark matter and dark energy make up some 95% of everything in the universe.
00:29 For all you keen mathematicians out there, that means all the stars, planets, gases,
00:33 and everything else make up only a measly 5%.
00:36 Yet dark matter and dark energy remain cosmic mysteries, largely because they're invisible
00:41 to both the naked eye and any other instrumentation we have at our disposal.
00:45 Which is why the ESA launched the telescope, hoping to take the largest ever high-resolution
00:49 composite imaging of the entire sky.
00:52 They say they're hoping this will show us all together the movements and behaviors of
00:55 billions of galaxies, perhaps providing some data of the effects of dark matter and dark
01:00 energy on the cosmos.
01:01 This image of spiral galaxy IC 342, which Euclid just captured for instance, might tell
01:06 us how much dark matter is in the galaxy once astronomers work out its rotational speed,
01:11 with the researchers adding that this photo of globular cluster NGC 6397 might provide
01:16 data on how similar structures should move in our home galaxy, telling us how much dark
01:20 matter is in the Milky Way.
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