Einstein’s general theory of relativity tells us that mass warps the fabric of space itself. Light, following that curved space, bends around massive objects like galaxies and galaxy clusters. When the alignment is just right, the result is extraordinary, background galaxies appear stretched into glowing arcs, or smeared into perfect rings known as Einstein rings.
Now the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope has released a novel dataset of unprecedented scale, and scientists need facilitate searching it. The Space Warps citizen science project, hosted on the Zooniverse platform, is inviting members of the public to join professional astronomers in hunting for gravitational lenses hidden within Euclid’s first full year of observations.
Over a period of six years, Euclid will observe the shapes, distances and motions of billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years. Euclid is a European mission, built and operated by ESA, with contributions from NASA.
