ESA releases the first map of one billion Milky Way Stars

On Wednesday, the European Space Agency released the first inventory of over a billion stars from its Gaia satellite, the biggest all-sky survey of celestial items thus far.

The ESA mission is dedicated to putting together the most in-depth 3D chart ever made of the Milky Way galaxy. Gaia has already established the specific position in the sky and also the brightness of more than 1100 million stars. The release also includes the distances and the motions across the sky for greater than 2 million stars.

“Gaia is at the forefront of astrometry, charting the sky at precisions that have never been achieved before,” Alvaro Giménez, an ESA science director, said in a press release. “Today’s release gives us a first impression of the extraordinary data that await us and that will revolutionize our understanding of how stars are distributed and move across our Galaxy.”

Launched nearly three years ago, Gaia began its scientific mission in July 2014. This first release of data is comprised of information gathered during its first 14 months of scanning the sky, up to September 2015.

“The beautiful map we are publishing today shows the density of stars measured by Gaia across the entire sky, and confirms that it collected superb data during its first year of operations,” said Timo Prusti, Gaia project scientist at ESA.

By allowing researchers to gain more precise measurements of stellar ranges, Gaia’s information could help verify just how swiftly the universe has grown since its creation. By investigating stellar trajectories, the satellite could help researchers figure out where certain clusters of stars originated from, and perhaps how forces like dark matter affect their motion today. Astronomers also expect to uncover lots of new items, including planets that signify their presence with a tell-tale “wobble” invisible stars.

Gaia circles the sun, tracking a path that keeps it around a million miles beyond Earth’s own orbit. The craft holds two telescopes, each with a billion-pixel camera. Gaia will watch each of its billion-plus targets around 70 times, allowing researchers to chart shifts in illumination and location for many years.

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Image credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC

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