ⓘ Steve Busch - Unsplash
Although the Euclid space telescope is equipped with instruments to observe distant galaxies, it recently detected a comet that was previously unknown. Located in the solar system, it could take thousands of years to orbit the Sun.
Launched on July 1, 2023, the Euclid space telescope is mainly designed to study the universe and dark matter. Its observations could help astronomers to understand the expansion of the universe.
However, images taken by Euclid between September 16 and 24, 2026, revealed a previously unknown comet. Indeed, Mikko Pöntinen of the University of Helsinki made this discovery using software that can detect moving objects in the telescope's data.
According to Pöntinen, a streak was visible in the images, which revealed the presence of a celestial object. By analyzing these images more closely, he noticed that a fuzzy cloud surrounded the object.
However, this comet did not appear in the catalogs of known asteroids and comets. After Pöntinen submitted his findings to the Minor Planet Center (MPC), it was officially classified as a new comet and named C/2026 S1 (Euclid).
This comet is located about 810 million miles (about 1.3 billion kilometers) from Earth. According to astronomers, it follows an orbit around the Sun that takes about 345,000 years to complete.
What makes this discovery remarkable is that the Euclid space telescope avoids regions of the sky where comets and asteroids are commonly found. In addition, it is designed to take stable images of distant galaxies, not to track fast-moving objects.
Alexis Stegmann - Tech Writer - 818 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2025
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