
Copernical Team
After the launch of Euclid: 'This is a big step toward understanding dark matter and dark energy'

What is it like to work on the fundamental questions about the universe? On July 1, the Euclid satellite launched successfully. This mission from the European Space Agency will take images of the sky to create the most detailed map of the universe ever made. Astronomer Henk Hoekstra (Leiden Observatory) and physicist Alessandra Silvestri (Leiden Institute of Physics) tell about their role in the mission.
The new space satellite is like the Google of the universe. "Euclid is basically a data-gathering machine," Hoekstra explains. "What Hubble covered in 30 years, Euclid can do in one week in both optical and infrared wavelengths. So it's a huge volume of data. With this, you are guaranteed to find the needle in a haystack."
Hoekstra has multiple roles in the mission. He is the lead of the weak lensing group and one of the four cosmology coordinators. This means he was involved from the early stages to set the requirements for the accuracy of the data Euclid will obtain.
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