Shaw-IAU Workshops by the OAE

Most of the energy and matter in the Universe is made up of two mysterious components: Dark Matter and Dark Energy. The first one is responsible for how matter structures like galaxies and galaxy clusters form, the other drives the accelerated expansion of the Universe. Their natures are currently completely unknown.

In 2023, the ESA launched a new mission to shed light on this mysterious Dark Universe: The Euclid telescope, which aims to observe a third of the night sky with an unprecedented combination of wide images, spatial resolution, and sensitivity to low surface brightness objects. Its goal is to map the distribution of dark matter using both the positions and observed shapes of galaxies as tracers.

In this talk I will explain the basic concepts behind this goal and explain why Euclid is the ideal tool for this science case. I will further show first results from the mission and give an outlook to what we can expect from the mission.