The European Space Agency’s Euclid mission has unveiled a remarkable new section of its cosmic map, offering a glimpse into the vastness of our universe.

At the recent International Astronautical Congress at Milan, Italy, ESA’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, and director of science, Carole Mundell, shared an impressive 208-gigapixel mosaic of stars and galaxies.

The initial segment, created from 260 observations conducted between March 25 and April 8, spans 132 square degrees of the Southern Sky — an area more than 500 times that of the full moon.

Representing just 1 percent of Euclid’s ambitious six-year survey, the mosaic is a mere introduction to what will eventually be the largest 3D cosmic map yet, detailing the shapes, distances, and movements of billions of galaxies up to 10 billion light-years away.

Already, the first fragment captures approximately 100 million celestial sources, including stars within our Milky Way and distant galaxies. Remarkably, about 14 million of these galaxies are potential keys to understanding dark matter and dark energy’s mysterious effects on the universe.

“This stunning image is the first piece of a map that in six years will reveal more than one third of the sky,” a Euclid project scientist at ESA, Valeria Pettorino, said in a press release. “This is just 1% of the map, and yet it is full of a variety of sources that will help scientists discover new ways to describe the Universe.”

Euclid’s sophisticated cameras have captured an astounding number of cosmic objects, with the ability to zoom in to intricate structures like spiral galaxies. The mosaic also showcases dim, light-blue clouds — dubbed “galactic cirrus” — between the stars, consisting of gas and dust. These clouds reflect optical light from the Milky Way and are visible in far-infrared light, as previously observed by ESA’s Planck mission.