On Thursday (Nov. 12), the Euclid space telescope released its first major batch of data, capturing the light of more than a billion objects over an area of sky as big as 9,500 full moons. The data release lays the foundation for one of the largest-ever 3D maps of the cosmos and many groundbreaking discoveries about the nature of dark energy and dark matter.

The European Space Agency 's (ESA) Euclid space telescope has been called the "Dark Universe Detective" because of its capability to investigate the dual mysteries of dark matter , the universe's most mysterious stuff, and dark energy , the force accelerating the expansion of the universe. Collectively, these cosmic elements are sometimes referred to as the dark universe.

The new data release, designated DR1-Foundation, was built from 13 months of observations and is accompanied by a multitude of images, including large sky mosaics.…