Everything we see – stars and galaxies, planets and people – amounts to just 5% of the universe. The other 95% is a mystery. It is thought to be composed of dark matter – helping to hold it together – and dark energy driving its expansion.

Three years ago the European Space Agency launched the Euclid space telescope – to amass precise data from billions of galaxies, as far out as 10 billion light-years away, hoping for clues from their motion to effects from the unseen dark universe.

Prof. Andy Taylor’s team at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh have a lead role in the data analysis; and they have been seeing many spectacular images. He shows some and describes the work, and some of the discoveries too – from loose stars stripped from their parent galaxies to free-floating, planetary objects on solitary courses through space.