EUCLID
The ESA Euclid mission (merging of DUNE and SPACE) aims at obtaining stringent constraints on the main open questions of cosmology (dark energy, dark matter, formation and evolution of structures and galaxies). Euclid will measure the distance-redshift relation and the growth of structure by optimizing its observing strategy on two complementary dark energy probing methods: The baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO) method relies on the distribution of baryonic matter, i.e. galaxies, to infer the redshift-distance relation. The weak gravitational lensing (WL) whereby the distribution of mass along the line of sight distorts the apparent shapes and orientation of galaxies. The baseline mission carries a telescope with a primary mirror of 1.2 m diameter. The rest of the payload consists of three scientific instruments: a CCD based optical imaging channel, used to measure the shapes of galaxies at the diffraction limit of 0.21-0.23 arcsec in one single wide visual band (R+I+Z) spanning the wavelength range of 550-920 nm; a NIR imaging photometry channel, containing up to three NIR bands (Y, J, H), employing NIR detector arrays with 0.3 arcsec pixels; a NIR spectrometric channel, operating in the wavelength range 0.8-1.7 μm at a spectral resolution λ/Δλ ∼ 400. A request for funding has been submitted to ASI. INAF OAPd has the responsibility of the focal plane detectors.
People: F. Bortoletto, C. Bonoli, M. D'Alessandro, E. Giro
Collaboration: The Euclid Consortium
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