Euclid’s view of rich galaxy cluster Abell 3128

ensci_euclid20261112i 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 Abell 3128, a cluster of hundreds of galaxies lying around 800 million light-years away from us. Abell 3128 is one of the richest members of the Horologium supercluster of galaxies, which is itself made up of more than 30 smaller galaxy clusters.

Abell 3128 is home to a great many galactic residents, as captured here, including whirling spirals and fuzzy ellipticals. A wonderful celestial object can be seen directly at the image’s centre: a strong gravitational lens, where the light travelling to us from a more distant galaxy has been warped by a massive object in the foreground, creating beautiful blue arcs and stretched-out shapes on the sky.

This frame shows a fraction of not only Abell 3128 but another galaxy cluster named ACT-CL J0330-5227; while in reality the two clusters are separated by a huge distance of around 5 billion light-years, they overlap here in our line of sight.

The image took Euclid about 70 minutes to acquire and covers a sky area of 0.12 deg2 (just over half the size of the full Moon). It shows Euclid’s powers at maximum resolution.

Provider: Euclid

Image Source: https://euclid.caltech.edu/image/euclid20261112i-euclid-s-view-of-rich-galaxy-cluster-abell-3128

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