Description
A decade ago, it was forecasted that the Euclid space telescope would discover ~150,000 strong gravitational lenses, revolutionising the field. However, it was previously unknown if it would be possible to extract these from the total 1.5 billion galaxies that Euclid will observe. In the recent early data release (Q1), which represents the first 0.45% of the full Euclid survey, we discovered 500 strong lenses through the combined power of machine learning and citizen science. Notably, this sample includes exotic lenses, such as 4 new double-source-plane lenses and ~30 edge-on disc lenses, despite the machine learning networks not being trained to find such objects. I will present these new lens discoveries, how the properties of these lenses compare to forecasts, and the lessons learnt about how to find strong lenses in large surveys. This sample provides the first glimpse into what is achievable by Euclid, and I will discuss our strategy to scale this up to DR1 and the full Euclid survey, where we are on track to discover ~10,000 and ~100,000 strong lenses respectively.
