Space

Gaia maps the Milky Way to the tune of 1.7 billion stars

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Gaia's all-sky view of the Milky Way and neighboring galaxies – bright regions towards the middle indicate the star-dense galactic center, while the darker wisps indicate interstellar dust. The two bright blobs on the lower right are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way
ESA/Gaia/DPAC
A comparison of the different scales that the Gaia mission can look at
ESA
The Gaia mission's second data release included the rotations of several million stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way
ESA/Gaia/DPAC
Gaia's all-sky view of the Milky Way and neighboring galaxies – including brightness and colors of stars (top), total density of stars (middle) and highlighting the interstellar dust (bottom)
ESA/Gaia/DPAC
Gaia's all-sky view of the Milky Way and neighboring galaxies – bright regions towards the middle indicate the star-dense galactic center, while the darker wisps indicate interstellar dust. The two bright blobs on the lower right are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way
ESA/Gaia/DPAC
View gallery - 4 images

The European Space Agency (ESA) has taken a "galactic census" of the Milky Way, unveiling the second major data release from the Gaia mission. Along with some stars further afield, the data release provides the most detailed map of our home galaxy, which includes position, distance and motion data of nearly 1.7 billion stars, as well as the orbits and positions of thousands of asteroids.

The Gaia spacecraft began scanning the sky in 2014, and in September 2016 the first data release was published based on 14 months of observations. It contained position and brightness data of 1.1 billion stars, as well as the distance and motion data of two million of those stars.

This second data release has expanded the scope dramatically. Using half a million bright, distant quasars as a kind of celestial reference frame, Gaia was able to determine the coordinates of close to 1.7 billion stars, and catalogued the motion of 1.3 billion stars. The latter group includes the velocity and parallax motion – the apparent shift of the stars in the sky caused by the Earth's orbit – and allows researchers to separate their actual movements from those caused by our moving vantage point.

Gaia's all-sky view of the Milky Way and neighboring galaxies – including brightness and colors of stars (top), total density of stars (middle) and highlighting the interstellar dust (bottom)
ESA/Gaia/DPAC

Other information gathered includes brightness data on all 1.7 billion surveyed stars, color measurements of almost all of them, and for about 500,000 stars, how the brightness and color change over time. Surface temperatures have been measured for about 100 million of them, and the effect that interstellar dust plays has been measured for 87 million. Closer to home, Gaia has pinpointed the positions of over 14,000 asteroids in our solar system.

The data was precise enough to observe the motions of 75 globular clusters, which are groups of stars bound together by gravity. Zooming out further, the mission helped identify the orbits of 12 dwarf galaxies, including the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds that orbit around the Milky Way.

"Gaia is astronomy at its finest," says Fred Jansen, Gaia mission manager at ESA. "Scientists will be busy with this data for many years, and we are ready to be surprised by the avalanche of discoveries that will unlock the secrets of our galaxy."

A series of papers describing the finds is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. The team describes the data in the video below.

Source: ESA

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4 comments
piperTom
This data is publicly available - great! I sense a wonderful VR experience coming soon.
BrianK56
It will be cool to someday finally find out what the Milkyway looks like from a distance.
Brian M
1.7 billion stars, so if it was a billion to one chance of intelligence life being out there (earth doesn't count!) its a good bet we are not alone. Just hope they aren't like us....
warren52nz
Spectacular!!! And yet even as scientists unravel the wonders of the Universe, we still have to deal with thousands of people who think the Earth is flat! And these people can VOTE!