This is the most powerful survey
telescope in existence. It took 23
countries, 80 [music] companies, 300
institutes, and 3,500
people to build. A telescope unlike any
other. It views the sky with a broad
panoramic view, taking in swaths of
stars at once, whilst also focusing with
the precision of a surgeon, spotting the
smallest details from the faintest
lights. This is Uklid, and it needs this
unique skill set to solve a great cosmic
[music] mystery that's baffled
cosmologists for more than a century.
Because hidden in the darkness of space
lies an enigma that influenced the
development and [music] eventual destiny
of our entire universe.
There is a dark universe out there, one
we have [music] never seen or detected,
but Uklid intends to map it. I'm Alex
me today in this supercut as we take a look at the Uklid Space Telescope and
its efforts to chart the universe's dark
matter and energy and explore the
incredible discoveries it has been
making along the way.
To understand the need for Uklid, we'll
first need to start [music] by
understanding the mystery that cosmology
is facing.
Understanding the structure of this
universe is something [music] we only
really began to do in the last 100 years
or so. We had plenty of understanding of
stars before that point, but it was yet
to be discovered how far away some of
those stars actually were. Scientists
before then largely believed that the
universe was just a single galaxy filled
with stars. Although some astronomers
began to spot little fuzzy patches,
actually galaxies, in the sky and
postulated them to be island universes
external to our own, nothing was proven
until the 1920s when American astronomer
Edwin Hubble began studying one such
object for himself. While studying what
we now call the Andromeda galaxy in
1923, Hubble realized that one of the
stars he was looking at was a sephiid
variable star, a type of star that
blinks [music]
brighter and dimmer over the course of
weeks. Importantly, it had been proven
that these stars periods were linked to
their luminosity. So, by measuring how
regularly the star brightened and
dimmed, Hubble could calculate how
bright the star should have been. By
comparing that to how bright it actually
was, he could mathematically calculate
how far away it was. Sort of like how
knowing that a candle [music] that's
further away from you is dimmer than one
that's close by. Suddenly, he had a
ruler with which he could measure the
universe. And what he found surprised
him. The star he was examining was so
far away, it had to exist outside our
galaxy. Today, we take images of
Andromeda and the rest of the cosmos for
granted. With a quick internet search,
you can find a picture of almost
anything out there. But for much of
hands on one before they sell out. For now, though, let's look at how Hubble's
Andromeda images changed the [music]
face of cosmology with the revelation
that Andromeda was another galaxy.
This opened up our understanding, but it
wasn't long before another surprise
arrived. [music] Hubble noticed another
strange fact. He was able to see an
expanding universe. It felt like an
affront, a universe almost like a
mobile, dynamic, organic, an expanding
entity. It was an observation so
disturbing that even Einstein refused
[music] to accept it. The German
theoretical physicist had just shaken
the structures of the scientific
foundation by proposing an unimaginable
transformation to our old notions about
space [music] and time. And even then he
could not accept that the entire
universe was something dynamic and
changeable. In fact, he was so convinced
that our universe was a static entity,
Einstein set out to modify his original
equations by [music] adding an extra
element to stabilize the mathematics of
the universe. This addition was called
the cosmological constant.
For Einstein, the idea that the universe
was expanding was so distasteful that he
initially couldn't bring himself to
accept it. And yet, time and Edwin
Hubble proved his static model wrong,
making a cosmological constant
unnecessary.
There is an effect known as the Doppler
effect that says that the wavelength of
radiation stretches if its origin is
moving away from you and compresses if
it's moving towards you. Because Hubble
knew what frequencies the light from
these galaxies ought to be arriving at,
he could calculate their direction of
travel using this Doppler effect. And he
discovered that all the galaxies in the
universe were moving away from us. It
wasn't long before scientists realized
that if they were moving away from us
now, they must have once been a whole
lot closer.
The theory of the Big Bang was born.
But another strange fact troubled
scientists, one that the Big Bang
couldn't quite account for. It wasn't
just that the galaxies were moving away
from us. They were accelerating away
from us. The further away from us they
were, the faster they were moving. And
acceleration requires energy. Where was
this energy coming from? Nobody seemed
to know, but it seemed to permeate
everywhere.
To fill this gap in their knowledge,
scientists came up with the idea of dark
energy.
Applying general relativity to this
expanding model universe and comparing
it to the latest observational data,
scientists realized that the particles
we could see known as bionic matter made
up only 5% of the universe. Somewhere
out there is a shortfall of 95%.
It was the only thing that made sense.
matter was congregating strangely, as if
something invisible with gravity was
pulling it closer together. Scientists
called this substance dark matter and
attributed to it 27% of that mysterious
95% shortfall. But matter was also being
pushed apart. The remaining 68% of the
universe had to be the energy that was
responsible for that. Undetectable,
invisible, but everywhere. The maths
proved it.
There are a few different ideas about
the nature of this energy. For starters,
Einstein's cosmological constant raised
its head again, this time with a new
application. Einstein originally came up
with the idea of such a constant as a
way of perfectly counteracting gravity,
a push to balance its pull to ensure the
universe neither expanded and
contracted. But if you start with a
bigger cosmological constant, you'd get
a universe that tipped into constantly
accelerating away from itself, just like
we see in real life. Einstein
hypothesized that empty space might not
truly be nothing, but that it held
energy and it could and did create more
of itself. This creation of space would
create more energy, increasing the
pushing power as time went on. It's
unclear why space would have this
property, though. It was more a
recognition that it seemed to an
explanation.
To fill the gap, quantum mechanics
stepped up to the plate. Scientists of
this school hypothesized that perhaps
virtual particles were to blame for this
extra energy. Virtual particles are
pairs of atoms that simply pop into
existence as a quirk of the quantum wave
function that exists everywhere. They
don't stick around for long as they meet
and cancel each other out again. But in
the moment before their annihilation,
they could conceivably push against
things, exerting force. This theory had
some experimental evidence to back it
up. There is some suggestion that
virtual particles do in fact exist, at
least in some form. But when scientists
tried to work out how much energy such
particles could create if this was
happening in the vacuum of space, their
answer proved to be too large. And not
just by a little, by about 120 zeros.
When your answer is too big by 120,
there's likely something wrong with your
maths. Indeed, this answer got the
dubious accolade as the worst
theoretical prediction in the history of
physics.
The third main idea is that of a varying
cosmological constant. So not really a
constant at all, but rather an adjusting
field like an electrical field or a
gravitational field that accounted for
this repelling force throughout space.
This force was called quintessence and
it might be the fifth fundamental force
of existence if it really does exist.
The problem with this idea, however, is
the same as the issue with the
cosmological constant. There is no
explanation as to why it exists.
In short, this is still a very poorly
understood field of study. More
information would be needed before
accurate conclusions can be drawn.
Spotting something invisible is
naturally hard, but studying dark energy
through its impact on the universe
around us is already underway. Different
observatories are attempting this in
different ways. Bingo. The Barriian
Acoustic Oscillations from the
Integrated Neural Gas Observations
Telescope in Sao Paulo, Brazil, is a
land-based radio telescope that intends
to monitor the radiation given off by
hydrogen atoms in the dark patches of
space between galaxies to see if there
are any unusual distributions of matter
that might point to the influence of
dark energy. A curious fact about the
universe is that matter clusters in
waves. It is statistically more likely
that there is a distance of around 500
million lightyears between any two
galaxies than any other number. It's
thought that this is to do with ripples
in the early universe right after the
big bang that have coalesed into more
solid forms of matter as the universe
cooled locking those ripples into place.
Seeing the gaps between such ripples
even in the darkest corners of space
could be very instructive.
However, if you really want to spot dark
energy's hand over time in space, you
need to go big. And it's for that
purpose that issa launched the Uklid
space telescope on the 1st of July 2023
from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
You need to understand the three things
that make this telescope and its
pictures [music] so unique. Firstly,
Uklid's ultra wide lens captures more of
the sky at once than any telescope ever
has.
It gathers highresolution light data
from billions of galaxies, some as far
away as 10 billion lightyears from us.
Compared to groundbased surveys, it has
four times the resolution and 15 times
the sensitivity in the near infrared. It
can also spot objects hundreds of times
fainter than the ones GIA can detect. In
a single observation, Uklid records vast
cosmic structures and precise details of
individual galaxies. The result, an
image that conveys multiple cosmic
scales at the same time, bringing home
details in a way that makes researchers
giddy.
Secondly, Uklid measures subtle
distortions in galaxy shapes caused by
dark matter's gravitational influence,
creating a gravitational lensing map.
This is key to understanding how galaxy
clusters grow and evolve while also
showing us how dark matter has played a
role in literally shaping the universe.
And finally, Uklid is creating a 3D map
of the universe with two advanced
instruments. The visible imaging system
captures ultrasharp images in visible
light to measure galaxy shapes and
positions while the near infrared
spectrometer and photometer measures red
shifts placing galaxies in 3D space. In
short, Uklid is kind of a big deal.
Uklid's mission is to survey a massive
patch of sky with a level of detail and
sharpness that's four times greater than
previously achieved by groundbased
telescopes. It wants to map everything
going back 10 billion years. The hope is
that in so doing, it'll be possible to
create a 3D map of the influence of dark
energy with a capacity to see how dark
energy's influence has changed or remain
constant over all that time. Uklid will
also look at individual stars too, but
its main objective is sheer volume.
This way, the pattern [music] of dark
energy will hopefully emerge.
Traveling about 1.5 million kilometers
over the course of four weeks, Uklid
joined its siblings, the Gaia and James
Webb telescopes [music]
in orbit around Lrange point 2. This
location is ideal for studying and
imaging deep space. [music] It allows
telescopes to keep the sun, moon, and
earth behind them at all times so that
they never interfere with observations.
[music] It's also close enough to Earth
that communications are easy. Since L2
[music]
keeps pace with Earth's orbit around the
sun, we stay close to our instruments.
Uklid immediately started taking its
first images. Although these photos of
stars scapes and galaxies were only
tests and do not represent the levels of
[music] fidelity Uklid was able to
manage once it finished its tuning. Once
the collaboration process was complete,
however, it began its six-year mission
to map out the stars and hopefully will
eventually answer important questions
like what is the nature of dark energy
and whether [music] our understanding of
the laws of gravity is really complete.
[music]
That was 3 years ago and it's found a
lot since then. So, let's take a look.
Let's fast forward to October 2024
when's Uklid Space Telescope sent back
its first batch of images as they are
some of the best space images I've ever
seen. Known as Uklid's first light, this
photo collection is a dazzling tour of
the universe's galaxies, and scientists
back then immediately started freaking
out at what they were seeing. Uklid's
photos have called into question our
ideas of how the universe evolved, given
us new insight into the role of dark
matter in structuring the cosmos, and
even let us peer into the past by
capturing galaxies 10 billion lighty
years away. All in all, the hype in
astronomical community around these
images is real, as summed up by one
Uklid project scientist. We have never
seen astronomical images like this
before, containing so much detail. They
are even more beautiful and sharp than
we could have hoped for, showing us many
previously unseen features in well-known
areas of the nearby universe.
So, let me take you on a tour through
Uklid's first light images, one by one.
Starting with our map.
Thanks to ISA's GIA and plank missions,
we already had a pretty solid map of our
Milky Way. Uklid [music] intended to
fill in the blanks. In these first
images, it had only covered about 1% of
the map it was sent to create, but they
are still extraordinary. Between the
25th of March and the 8th of April 2024,
Uklid took 260 pictures of the southern
sky, covering an area 500 times the size
of the full moon we see from Earth.
Putting these pictures together,
scientists created a mosaic [music]
spanning millions of stars and galaxies.
And remember, this is just 1% of what
it's planning to do.
Because Uklid captures both big picture
and detailed data at the same time,
researchers can see the sky at different
scales. From extragalactic views, we can
zoom into the galaxy clusters, their
core, and even individual galaxies.
So, let's explore some of these cosmic
structures, starting with one of the
biggest known in the universe.
This is the Perseus cluster located 240
million lightyears from Earth. This
image shows over 1,000 Perseus cluster
galaxies and more than 100,000 faraway
galaxies in the background. Scientists
think the way galaxies are organized can
tell us a lot about the distribution of
dark matter and dark energy. You see,
gravity might cause dark matter to
organize itself into filaments. We
aren't sure, but NASA scientists believe
it's possible that where these filaments
intersect, galaxies stick closer
together, forming a cluster. The theory
goes that if there were no dark matter,
galaxies would be distributed evenly
throughout the universe, which, as we
mentioned, isn't the case. While many
galaxies in the Perseus cluster are
already known, cosmological simulations
predict there should be several dwarf
galaxies there, too.
If we could see those faint galaxies, we
could analyze their shape and distortion
relative to the cluster and background
to determine how dark matter is
distributed. The problem is these dwarf
galaxies tend to be overshadowed by
older stars shining infrared light. So,
they've evaded direct observation until
now. Uklid discovered more than 630
previously unknown dwarf galaxies which
is a huge breakthrough in the study of
dark matter.
More than dark matter, Uklid is also
teaching us about star formation too.
Let's go to our next destination and
I'll show you.
Say hello to Ireular galaxy NGC 6822
shining bright 1.6 6 million lighty
years away. It was first identified as a
remote stellar system by Edwin Hubble in
1925.
Now almost 100 years later, Uklid is
sending back highresolution images of
the entire galaxy and its surroundings.
The James Web Space Telescope did also
image this galaxy a few years ago, but
with a much narrower field of view.
Scientists are interested in Uklid's
wide-angle photos of this galaxy for
what they might tell us about star
formation and the early universe. You
see, stars smash lighter atoms like
hydrogen and helium together to produce
heavier atoms, including metals. This
process happens across a star's lifespan
and is why we don't see many heavier
elements in the early universe because
[music] they take time to accumulate.
Surprisingly, many of the stars in NGC
6822 have very low levels of metal
atoms. By studying low metallicity
galaxies like this one, scientists hope
to learn more about how galaxies evolved
in the early universe. Uklid has made
that a monumentally easier task thanks
to the color information from his NISP
instrument and its wide field of view.
Uklid has also revealed several
previously unknown globular star
clusters and H2 regions in this galaxy.
H2 regions are the colorful gas clouds
we see here. When stars are born, they
emit light so strong and bright that it
ionizes the hydrogen gas surrounding
them, resulting in these H2 regions.
Studying these will help us better
understand the cloud properties at the
time a star is born and what conditions
are needed for massive star formation.
Speaking of globular clusters, here's
one in a different part of the sky.
Globular cluster NGC 6397
is 7,800 lightyears from home, making it
the second closest one to us. This image
is one part of a wider image from Uklid,
which I'll show you in a little bit.
Globular clusters are kind of like
Hollywood, a high concentration of stars
in one place where everyone is trying to
outshine everyone else. What does this
mean? The smaller, dimmer stars get
drowned out by the bigger, brighter
ones. On top of that, they extend quite
a long way out from their center with
the radial parts mainly made up of low
mass faint stars that until now have
been hard to see. Ironically, it is
these faint stars that hold the most
scientific interest for unlocking the
history of the Milky Way. As David
Masadri of the National Institute for
Astrophysics in Italy puts it, currently
no other telescope than Uklid can
observe the entire globular cluster and
at the same time distinguish its faint
stellar members in the outer regions
from other cosmic sources.
Hubble actually imaged the center of
this cluster in 2021, but to image the
entire cluster, including the sprawling
outskirts like Uklid did, would have
taken it far too much time and
resources. On the other hand, Uklid
snapped this shot in just 1 hour and it
is absolutely beautiful both
aesthetically and scientifically.
Sometimes we see stars arranged like
this and sometimes we see them arranged
as spiral galaxies. Yet despite living
in one, we don't actually know how they
maintain their shape. The next Uklid
pictures aim to help answer those
questions.
Coldwell 5, also known as the hidden
galaxy, is hard to observe because it
lies in the busy disc of our Milky Way
about 11 million lighty years away. It
tends to get overshadowed by dust, gas,
and other stars. It is considered a
lookalike galaxy to our own, which makes
it a prime point of interest for
researchers. It's pretty hard to study a
galaxy you're inside of since you only
get to observe it from one plane.
Uklid's near infrared instrument was
able to pierce through the dust and
reveal the galaxy in all its glory.
We've captured it before from the
ground, but with nowhere near the detail
Uklid manages. The Uklid image might
look normal, as if every telescope can
make such an image. But that is not
true. What's so special here is that we
have a wide view covering the entire
galaxy, but we can also zoom in to
distinguish individual stars and star
clusters. We can trace the history of
star formation and better understand how
stars formed and evolved over the
lifetime of the galaxy, says Uklid
consortium scientist Leslie Hunt.
We still don't fully understand how
spiral galaxies maintain their structure
or the role dark matter plays in forming
them. Ukalid's ability to capture this
galaxy's sprawling spiral arms and dust
lanes in such detail will help
scientists understand the link between
dust, gas, and star formation on a large
scale in a way we've never been able to
before.
There's one last image I want to show
you on this cosmic tour from Uklid's
2024 data, and I've saved you the best
for last. Let's see what these colorful
clouds are hiding.
Our fifth and final photo shows the
Horse Head Nebula. It has been
photographed by various telescopes
before, but never with such a sharp and
wide view as Uklid managed. Again, this
shot was taken in just 1 hour, which is
absolutely mind-blowing. It's like
someone just stopped at a viewpoint and
snapped the picture. Located
approximately 1,375
lighty years away, this is the nearest
massive star forming region. It lies
just south of Al-Nitak, the easternmost
star in Orion's three star belt and is
part of the expansive Orion molecular
cloud.
It is in this swirling nebula the
scientists hope to find evidence of many
previously unknown Jupiter mass planets.
One such planet has already been
identified. Sori 62, a young planet 10
times the mass of Jupiter and a
temperature of 1,200°
C.
The clouds behind the Horsehead Nebula
are illuminated by UV radiation from
nearby star Sigma Orionus. While the
clouds of the Horsehead Nebula itself
are made up of cold molecular hydrogen,
which gives off barely any heat or
light, this makes the Horsehead Nebula
an interesting place to learn more about
star formation, as scientists can
observe and compare how stars form in
dark versus bright clouds. Sigma Orionus
is part of a group of stars called an
open cluster, which researchers hope to
get a more complete picture of with
Uklid's data. For example, free floating
planets have been known to exist in
Sigma Orionus, but with Uklid's ultra
high sensitivity, scientists found many
smaller FFPs than were previously
documented. As one research paper put
it, FFPs in that zone appear to be
ubiquitous [music] and numerous.
This was just the beginning. With
another five and a half years of mission
time left, Uklid still had a lot of
ground to cover. And by now, I hope you
get a sense of the scale and the
profound importance of the images it was
capturing. But with such scale comes a
problem that must be solved. Let me
illustrate this point with a story. In
September of 2023, Bruno Alieri, an
archive scientist working on data from
our infamous Uklid telescope, saw
something fuzzy in one of the images.
Uklid had been busily surveying a huge
swath of the sky in an effort to track
dark matter and dark energy in galaxies.
And what Altieri saw around galaxy
NGC6505
was a perfect naturally occurring
phenomenon for doing just that. Altieri
had found an Einstein ring. And when
highresolution images came through,
scientists were able to see it in all
its glory. Einstein rings are an
incredibly rare mirage of the universe.
The ring you're seeing in this image is
not a truly physical object, but is
actually an example of strong
gravitational lensing, where the light
from a second galaxy hiding behind the
first has its light bent towards us
thanks to the first galaxy's gravity.
Due to the way the gravity from the
first galaxy curves space, if the two
galaxies are lined up just right, the
curvature of light happens equally
around all sides of the first galaxy,
redirecting perfectly to create the
impression of a complete ring. The
conditions for this occurring are
incredibly rare. If the two galaxies are
even a little off, then you will only
get an arc rather than a full ring, or
you will get nothing at all. But though
rare, Einstein rings are extremely
useful. Scientists can use them to
calculate the mass of everything within
the ring. In this case, NGC6505's
galactic nucleus, providing them a
second tool to detect mass. And if
there's more mass detected within the
ring than we can physically see, then
the difference is likely dark matter.
Einstein rings can also let you see
further galaxies than your telescope
could normally detect, which can be
analyzed to learn about the more distant
galaxy. There are a lot of benefits. But
here's the thing. This discovery, while
fortunate, was not how most Einstein
rings will be discovered going forward.
The size of the images Uklid is
producing is truly daunting. To be
clear, the maps being generated are
sized in pabytes, hundreds of them. To
put that into scale, your computer at
home is likely running either gigabytes
or maybe up to a handful of terabytes of
storage space if it's particularly
high-end. Each terabyte being 1,000 GB,
but a pabyte is [music] 1,000 terab. To
store some of these star maps properly,
you need the storage equivalent of
nearly a thousand computers. The data
contained in Uklid's maps will be huge.
You remember that 1% of the completed
map was released in late 2024. That
segment already contains 100 million
sources of light, either stars or entire
galaxies. That's just too many for the
human mind to handle. There will be
thousands of Einstein rings hiding
amongst all that data, all those stars.
But to find them on our own would take
far too long, unless we want it to take
generations in the attempt. It gets
worse. Strong gravitational lensing
isn't even the main way that Uklid wants
to detect dark matter. Instead, it will
be looking for examples of weak
gravitational lensing. The idea is
similar, but instead of a middle galaxy
redirecting light, it's an entire galaxy
cluster. And instead of a single galaxy
behind them having its light bent, it's
a number of galaxies that are deviating
from the statistical average. You might
be asking how on earth that possibly
works. But let me explain. There are
enough stars and galaxies in the
universe that we can predict on average
how close together they are likely to
be. Which means if you look at any
particular bunch of stars, you can see
if they deviate from that statistical
average or not. To detect weak
gravitational lensing, you are looking
to see if the light sources behind a
clump of galaxies are deviating in such
a way that the statistical deviation
starts to look like a ring. galaxies
appearing where they probably aren't
really because their light is being
weakly bent by intervening mass. Good
luck spotting that just with your
eyeballs.
In other respects, weak gravitational
lensing works the same as strong
gravitational lensing. You can model
objects with the resulting ring to
detect the presence of invisible dark
matter. This highlevel calculation is
the way Uklid hopes to map much of the
dark matter in the third of the night
sky it's looking at. Finding examples
like this is something you'd never hope
to be able to do by the old-fashioned
astronomy technique of pointing your
home telescope at the sky. The solution?
It all comes down to a tool you might
have heard of by now. Artificial
intelligence. [music]
AI, specifically machine learning in
this case, can be trained to identify
examples of weak or strong gravitational
lensing in all that data. We have
examples where it's already done this,
such as when astronomers used AI to
identify 56 gravitational lens
candidates [music] from images taken by
the VT in Chile. We have further
examples where it's been put to good use
doing similar tasks. In a citizen
science initiative in Japan, 10,000
human volunteers sifted through data
from the Subaru telescope, identifying
20,000 galaxies. [music] From this, an
AI was trained to identify the pattern
and discovered a further 410,000 [music]
galaxies in the data with 98% accuracy.
Machine learning is an incredible tool
in astronomy and has helped find
exoplanets in Kepler data. So it can
certainly be taught to repeatedly spot
Einstein rings or weak gravitational
lensing in the Uclid data. Then it's
just about having a powerful enough
computer or network of computers to run
the AI and feed it the pabytes of data
and seeing what patterns it detects.
This new tool will let us look at the
universe in ways we never would have
been able to do without it. Even if the
accuracy isn't 100%, our understanding
will undeniably improve. Who knows what
mysteries large patterns like this could
solve. Of course, as you may be glad to
know, AI is not doing this work alone.
There are thousands of scientists who
are evaluating the data guiding the
machine learning programs and verifying
the discoveries being made. And in the
years between Uklid's first data release
and now a host of other discoveries have
been made. [music] In just February of
2026, with the help of Hubble and the
Subaru telescopes, Uklid's detection
techniques allowed it to uncover
something scientists are calling a dark
galaxy. [music]
a galaxy full of dark matter with very
few stars. This galaxy [music]
called CDG2
contains just four globular star
clusters compared to the Milky Ways
[music]
150. These dense collection of stars are
reliable indications of a galaxy being
present. [music]
So scientists know something is there in
the darkness.
In fact, this is the first galaxy
detected only through its globular
cluster population. Scientists believe
that 99% of the mass present in CDG2 is
dark matter. It's incredible to me that
there are hidden galaxies floating out
there giving off very little light and
yet being rich in this secret mass.
Later in June 2026, Uklid turned its
gaze much closer to home onto the center
of our Milky Way. Just take a look at
these dazzling stellar images. These
images were taken all in the course of
just one day, but capture so much detail
about our inner galaxy that it is
[music] so easy to miss. The sheer
number of stars in the center of our
galaxy makes it easy for [music]
telescopes to be blinded by the sheer
amount of light there. Uklid is able to
differentiate between the various stars,
allowing scientists to get an incredibly
clear picture of the stars and planets
there, comparable in detail to the
Hubble telescope's resolution power, but
done in a fraction of the time Hubble
would need to take on this. With the
image Uklid took here, scientists now
have a baseline they will be able to use
in detecting future microlensing events
as planets move in front of their stars.
[music] For instance, when the Roman
space telescope later looks at this same
region and spots a microl lensing event
or the moment where the light of a star
brightens due to a planet moving in
front of it and gravitationally pulling
the stars light more towards us,
scientists will be able to compare the
total mass of the star and planet with
the earlier Uklid data of just the star,
making the planet's mass and nature easy
to calculate. This can offer so much
insight into the sorts of planets
present within our inner galaxy. But
more on all this another time. I
actually have a whole video about
Uklid's image of the center of the
galaxy coming up soon. And finally,
Uklid's incredible talent for both
widespread yet detailed imaging is
proving to be a gamecher in the hunt for
one elusive primordial object, ancient
quazars. The exact nature of the early
universe is shrouded in mystery as the
extreme distances involved means light
from 13 billion years ago has diffused
and is therefore extremely faint to us.
It took scientists [music] a decade to
spot 10 or so quazars in the first 770
million years of the universe's
existence. Those that were the brightest
and easiest to spot. Uklid has detected
12 more in a single year. plus another
19 relatively closer to home. These 31
quazars in total will offer scientists a
better understanding of these colossal
powerful sources of light, which may in
turn help us better [music] understand
what conditions were like back at the
universe's dawn. Certainly a period of
our history we could do with getting a
clearer picture of. This is the power of
the Uklid telescope. [music] And there
are still four years to go on Uklid's
mission to map a third of the night sky.
Four more years of incredible
discoveries. With a telescope that's
both big picture and small dark matter,
strange new galaxies, beautiful stars
and nebula, Uklid will enhance our
understanding of it all. Who knows what
patterns will emerge from that expansive
data? what realizations we will get when
we finally hold all the pieces of the
puzzle in our hand at once. For now, we
will have to make do with what we have.
Uklid has so far completed 35% of its
star map. There are still so many more
discoveries and wonders on the horizon.
You can definitely [music] expect to
hear more from Uklid in the future.
Which of Uklid's discoveries are your
favorite so far? What do you hope to see
more of in the years ahead? Let me know
in the comments below.
what we do, come join the Astramm
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