An extraordinary preview of what the depths of the Universe have in store for us. The Euclid mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) has unveiled the first scientific data obtained from observations of deep fields—regions of the sky that lie at extreme distances.

Several faculty members from the Department of Physics at UniTS (Stefano Borgani, Matteo Costanzi, Marisa Girardi, Anna Gregorio, Pierluigi Monaco, Alexandro Saro), along with postdoctoral researchers and PhD students (Lucie Baumont, Yousry Elkhashab, Roberto Ingrao, Marius Lepinzan), are involved in the project, holding key roles ranging from coordinating the Instrument Operation Team to contributing to the Euclid Consortium Publication Group – Science. Their work also includes significant involvement in the Science Working Groups on Galaxy Clustering and Clusters of Galaxies, as well as in the Science Ground Segment. These activities, carried out in close collaboration with researchers from the INAF – Trieste Astronomical Observatory and SISSA, make Trieste one of the focal points of the Euclid Consortium.

At this stage, the space telescope has covered a vast area of the sky in three image mosaics. The results of these observations offer a unique opportunity to gain deeper insight into the large-scale structure of the Universe and the formation of galaxies over time.

In a period equivalent to just one week of observations, the telescope has detected more than 26 million galaxies, many at astonishing distances – up to 10.5 billion light-years from Earth. Of these, over 380,000 galaxies have already been classified, thanks to a detailed analysis of their morphology enabled by the combined use of artificial intelligence and citizen science. This approach has allowed the rapid and efficient processing of vast amounts of data, also leading to the identification of 500 candidate gravitational lenses.

The released data include numerous galaxy clusters, active galactic nuclei, and transient phenomena, which are key factors in understanding the invisible forces that shape the cosmos.

These first images vividly illustrate how galaxies of various shapes and sizes interweave, clustering into immense filaments that form a ‘cosmic web’—the vast structure connecting galaxies and galaxy clusters through strands of visible and invisible matter. This provides fundamental clues about how the Universe has evolved over time.