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The map measures stars closer to the edge of the Milky Way than ever.
YouTube / ESA
You can’t just drive a google maps car around the Milky Way to diagram it. It is fortunate, then, that the new information compiled by the European Space Agency’s Gaia observatory offers the most detailed map of the galaxy yet. The map includes nearly 2 billion stars and helps the agency trace the history of the Milky Way.
“The new Gaia data promises to be a treasure trove for astronomers,” Jos de Bruijne, deputy scientist for ESA’s Gaia project, said in a statement.
The new information not only brings the total number of stars mapped over seven years to about 2 billion, but includes “a detailed census of more than 300,000 stars in our cosmic neighborhood,” that is, stars within 326 light years. of the sun. . That number of 300,000 is believed to be 92% of the stars in that area. That’s 100 times more stars than previous data, dating back to 1991.
The new data provides location, motion, and brightness measurements that are “orders of magnitude” more accurate than the old information. In fact, the data is so precise that it reveals that the sun’s path is not a straight line, but slightly curved.
“Gaia has been looking up at the sky for the past seven years, mapping the positions and speeds of the stars,” said Caroline Harper, director of space science at the UK Space Agency. “Thanks to their telescopes, we now have in our possession the most detailed 3D atlas of a billion stars ever assembled.”
The new map helps astronomers make predictions, visualizing the movements of 40,000 stars 1.6 million years into the future, the agency reports.
This week’s release is the first of two parts, with the second expected in 2022. Gaia’s “star census” began in 2013.
