The map measures stars closer to the edge of the galaxy than ever before.
YouTube / ESA
You can’t just run one Google Maps The car around the galaxy to diagram it. Luckily, then, new data collected by the European Space Agency’s Gaia Observatory provides the most detailed map of the galaxy yet. The project’s map now includes about 2 billion stars and helps the agency track the history of the galaxy.
“The new Gaia data is a treasure trove for astronomers,” Jose de Bruyne, ESA’s Gaia deputy project scientist, said in a statement.
The new data will not only bring the total number of stars mapped in just seven years to close to 2 billion, but also include a “detailed count of more than 300,000 stars in our cosmic neighborhood,” meaning 326 light-years from the Sun. That 300,000 number is thought to be 92% of the stars in that region. That’s 100 times more stars than the old data, which is from 1991.
The new data provides location, speed, and brightness measurements that are “order of precision” rather than the old data. In fact, the data are so accurate that it turns out that the Sun’s path is not a straight line, but slightly curved.
Caroline Harper, head of space science at the UK Space Agency, said Gaia has been looking at the sky for the past seven years and mapping the position and velocity of stars. “Thanks to its telescope, we have in our possession today the most detailed billion-star 3D atlas collected so far.”
The new map helps astronomers predict the future, imagining the 1.6 million-year activity of 40,000 stars in the future.
This is the first of two episodes to be released this week, with the second expected in 2022. Gaia’s “stellar census” began in 2013.
