Telescope snaps most detailed photo yet of Milky Way's heart

The Euclid space telescope has captured the largest and most detailed photo ever taken of our galaxy's crowded heart, a dazzling image packed with 60 million stars, the European Space Agency said Wednesday. The new photo of the Milky Way's bright center will help in the search for planets beyond our Solar System, the agency said . At the center of our spiral galaxy "lies the bulge -- a large bubble containing billions of stars," French astronomer Jean-Charles Cuillandre, who works on the Euclid mission, told AFP. Euclid launched in 2023 on a mission to chart one-third of the sky in the hopes of shedding light on the enduring mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. "Now we've decided to point Euclid at the brightest area of the sky -- and it works superbly, it's extraordinary," Cuillandre said. The space agency also released a three-minute video highlighting the new images. Euclid, which is hovering 930,0000 miles from Earth, captured the image with its visible light camera over 26 hours in March 2025. The mosaic is composed of nine photographs, each covering an area of the sky larger than the Moon. Infographic explaining Euclid's survey ESA The original image was captured in black and white, but color was added using observations from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope located in Hawaii. However "we didn't do this just to produce a beautiful image," Cuillandre emphasised. …