How 1.7 Billion Stars Were Mapped With Dazzling 3-D Precision
The ESA's Gaia satellite is helping astronomers understand the origins of our galaxy, one star at a time.
More than a billion twinkling stars, drifting lazily across the sky as both Earth and our home galaxy revolve, have been mapped in 3-D by the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite. On Wednesday, scientists released a massive catalogue of data from the ambitious project, the second such information dump so far. In it are details about the wanderings of nearly 1.7 billion stars, more than seven million of which have been determined with exquisite precision.
“We’ve been waiting 20 years for this release,” says Amina Helmi of the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute at the University of Groningen.
Pinpointing the locations of stars on the sky may not seem like the most difficult task–after all, haven’t we been drawing the heavens
