Euclid view of the Horologium Supercluster

ensci_euclid20261112f November 12th, 2026

Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre and E. Bertin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

On 12 November 2026, ESA’s Euclid space telescope released its first major batch of data: DR1-Foundation. As part of this very large data release, Euclid observed this huge and fascinating patch of southern sky. The image comprises a total of 370 observations gathered over 18 days in autumn 2024 and spring 2025, and covers a sky area of 148 deg2 (around 740 times the size of the full Moon).

This patch of sky contains the Horologium supercluster of galaxies, which lies around 800 million light-years away from us and is made up of more than 30 smaller galaxy clusters. Countless galaxies can be seen in this Euclid image, along with other star clusters and galaxies lying nearer to us in the foreground, and incredibly distant objects from the early Universe in the background (as far as 10 billion light-years away).

Two prominent bright galaxies can be seen to the top of the frame; these are the ring galaxy NGC 1291 (below) and the lenticular galaxy NGC 1316 (above), which also displays beautiful streams of stars (a result of interactions with several nearby galactic companions).

[Technical details: This colour image was obtained by combining VIS data and NISP photometry in Y, J, and H bands. VIS and NISP enable observing astronomical sources in four different wavelength ranges. Aesthetics choices led to a combination of these four bands to be cast onto the traditional Red-Green-Blue colour channels used to represent images on our digital screens (RGB). The blue, green, red channels capture the Universe seen by Euclid around the wavelength 0.7, 1.1, 1.3, and 1.7 micron respectively. In the image, the stars have six prominent spikes due to how light interacts with the optical system of the telescope in the process of diffraction. The empty regions within the mosaic were intentionally avoided during the survey due to the presence of very bright stars, which would ‘blind’ Euclid’s sensitive instrumentation. The tilted rectangles in the picture mark regions heavily hit by X-rays and therefore masked out during processing.]

Provider: Euclid

Image Source: https://euclid.caltech.edu/image/euclid20261112f-euclid-view-of-the-horologium-supercluster

Image Use Policy: CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO or ESA Standard Licence