{"id":19244,"date":"2016-09-16T00:51:27","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T16:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/first-map-from-europes-gaia-satellite-charts-a-billion-stars-in-our-milky-way\/"},"modified":"2016-09-16T00:51:27","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T16:51:27","slug":"first-map-from-europes-gaia-satellite-charts-a-billion-stars-in-our-milky-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/first-map-from-europes-gaia-satellite-charts-a-billion-stars-in-our-milky-way\/","title":{"rendered":"First map from Europe\u2019s Gaia satellite charts a billion stars in our Milky Way"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_275322\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-275322\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-275322 size-full-width\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/160915-gaia-milky-way-630x394.png\" alt=\"Gaia all-sky map of Milky Way\" width=\"630\" height=\"394\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/160915-gaia-milky-way-630x394.png 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/160915-gaia-milky-way-768x480.png 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/160915-gaia-milky-way-1240x775.png 1240w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-275322\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This composite image shows an all-sky view of stars in our Milky Way galaxy, plus neighboring galaxies. Click on the image for a larger, annotated version. (Credit: ESA \/ Gaia \/ DPAC)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The team behind the European Space Agency\u2019s Gaia satellite has released its first catalog of more than a&nbsp;billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, but that\u2019s just the start.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, the readings from Gaia\u2019s all-sky survey of celestial objects will be assembled into the most detailed 3-D map ever made of our home galaxy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGaia is at the forefront of astrometry, charting the sky at precisions that have never been achieved before,\u201d Alvaro Gimenez, ESA\u2019s director of science, said in an announcement accompanying Wednesday\u2019s data release.<\/p>\n<p>The release provides the precise position and brightness for 1.142 billion stars, which is roughly 1 percent of the Milky Way\u2019s stellar population. About 400 million of the stars in this release are thought to have been previously uncharted.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s more, the distances and motions of more than 2 million stars have been measured, with more to come.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"First data from ESA's Gaia mission\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TTMnN9ehfjk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This release&nbsp;is&nbsp;based on data collected during Gaia\u2019s first 14 months of scanning the sky, from July 2014 to September 2015.&nbsp;Gimenez said the release provides merely a \u201cfirst impression of the extraordinary data that await us and that will revolutionize our understanding of how stars are distributed and move across our galaxy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gaia was launched in 2013 and uses two telescopes to track stars and other celestial objects from the vicinity of a gravitational balance point known as Sun-Earth L2. To determine distances and motions, Gaia&nbsp;tracks apparent shifts in the position of objects&nbsp;against their cosmic background as the truck-sized spacecraft moves around the sun.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to mapping stars, Gaia is also expected to detect new asteroids, exoplanets and quasars. It could even provide some new tests of Albert Einstein\u2019s theory of general relativity.<\/p>\n<p>The $830 million (\u20ac740 million) primary mapping mission is due to last&nbsp;until 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This composite image shows an all-sky view of stars in our Milky Way galaxy, plus neighboring galaxies. Click on the image for a larger, annotated version. (Credit: ESA \/ Gaia \/ DPAC) The team behind the European Space Agency\u2019s Gaia satellite has released its first catalog of more than a&nbsp;billion stars in our Milky Way [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2050,831,3226],"class_list":["post-19244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-cosmology","tag-european-space-agency","tag-gaia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19244"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}