With 30 times more sky surveyed and thousands of new strong-lens candidates found, the European satellite’s latest data release lays the groundwork for cosmology breakthroughs.

Euclid's view of the core of the M81 galaxy group.

ESA / Euclid / Euclid Consortium / NASA; Image processing: J.-C. Cuillandre / E. Bertin

In images of more than 900 million galaxies and spectra of more than 160 million sources, astronomers have found 60 million possible quasars and around 15,000 strong gravitational lens candidates. These are the headline numbers of the first major data release from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid space telescope . The release includes about 13 months of observations and 1.7 petabytes (1.7 million gigabytes) of data.

Euclid has already covered 1,900 square degrees, an area as big as 9,500 full Moons. The release contains raw data, calibrated images, catalogs, and spectra, along with mosaics that cover large swaths of sky.…