“Probing the local low surface brightness Universe in the era of the Euclid space telescope.“
This thesis is dedicated to evaluating and enhancing the Euclid space telescope’s capability to detect extended and faint structures in the Local Universe—commonly referred to as Low Surface Brightness (LSB) features. The work is structured around three main components:
* Injection of artificial sources into Euclid images to assess performance and limitations. By injecting mock galaxies with varying properties, measuring their photometric parameters, and comparing them to the final catalogs from the Euclid Wide Survey (EWS), we find high completeness down to 24 mag/arcsec², but a noticeable flux loss for sources larger than ~10 arcseconds.
* Development of an alternative Euclid pipeline optimized for LSB science, in response to the limitations identified in the standard data processing chain. Early tests demonstrate promising flux preservation in LSB regions, including the faint outskirts of nearby galaxies.
* Analysis of a Euclid image processed with this LSB-optimized pipeline. Early Release Observations (ERO) of galaxies in the Dorado group suggest that Euclid can indeed detect LSB structures, and that its data are well-suited for detailed photometric studies. These findings provide new insights into the formation and evolutionary processes of galaxies within this field.