Euclid galactic bulge – countless stars

This image shows an area of the observations of the galactic bulge, made by the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope. The galactic bulge – the central region of our galaxy – is a vast, tightly packed structure filled mainly with old, cooler stars, giving it its characteristic yellow colour.

The area is zoomed in ten times compared to the full image.

Explore this image at the highest resolution in ESASky.

Read more about this image here.

[Image description: A very dense field of tiny, closely packed points of light fills the image. The colour is almost uniform, dominated by bright yellow and gold tones across the entire frame. Small white points appear slightly brighter here and there, with a few faint bluish points scattered among them. No large dark patches or strong colour variations are visible, giving the image a smooth, grain‑like appearance.]

Technical details:

The Euclid galactic bulge survey was conducted in early 2025 using Euclid’s optical camera VIS (monochromatic, one colour). These are first and foremost Euclid images, defined by Euclid’s crisp resolution and spectacularly wide field of view; the colours were added using observations captured in the summer of 2025 with the Canada-France-Hawai'i Telescope's MegaCam camera (CFHT-Megacam) in Hawai’i. The colours captured by MegaCam are in optical light through three broad-band filters (u, g, and r) overlapping the very broad VIS band over the r-band. The appearance of the most luminous stars in these images looks different than those generated from Euclid-only images, with additional diffraction spikes and a subtle halo around the very bright stars. This a consequence of combining Euclid VIS data, for their sensitivity and sharpness, and CFHT-MegaCam for the colours. Subtle differences in optical design of the two telescopes become apparent for the brighter objects.