Skip to main content

What do 2 million stars look like? Europe’s space agency just gave us a map

The European Space Agency released the largest ever full-sky survey of celestial objects last week — a map of two million stars and data on their distances and motions through the sky. The release is the first batch of more than one billion that the agency hopes to catalog using its Gaia satellite in the coming year.

“Gaia is at the forefront of astrometry, charting the sky at precisions that have never been achieved before,” Alvaro Giménez, ESA’s Director of Science, 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.”

Recommended Videos

Gaia was launched in December 2013 and the data was collected by the satellite during its first 14 months in operation, once scientists solved a series of technical issues following its launch.

The map includes images of galaxies, open clusters, and globular clusters in our celestial neighborhood.

“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.

Along with information about distance, location, and movements of the stars, the satellite also measured the stars’ light curves, which will help scientists analyze their internal structures.

Gaia is ESA’s second star-gazing satellite, the first of which mapped some 100,000 stars. The team behind Gaia intends to image an unprecedented one billion stars, which the agency hopes to release by the end of 2017.

To attain such clear images, Gaia’s telescope must be detailed and accurate, with a focus plane that can capture over a billion objects and a precision comparable to targeting a coin from across the Atlantic Ocean.

Dyllan Furness
Former Contributor
Dyllan Furness is a freelance writer from Florida. He covers strange science and emerging tech for Digital Trends, focusing…
SpaceX’s private crewed launch to ISS is finally about to happen
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket waits to launch the Ax-4 mission to the space station.

Following a series of delays, SpaceX, Axiom Space, and NASA are now targeting 2:31 a.m. ET on Wednesday, June 25, (11:31 p.m. PT on Tuesday, June 24) for the launch of Axiom Space's fourth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The new schedule was announced on Monday night.

The Ax-4 mission will lift off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with the four-person crew traveling on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft after launching on a Falcon 9 rocket.

Read more
Check out the first stunning images from the world’s largest digital camera
Distant nebulas captured by the new Rubin Observatory.

The NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has unveiled its first images, showcasing the astonishing capabilities of its groundbreaking 3,200-megapixel digital camera, the largest in the world. 

The new $800 million observatory took a decade to build and represents a significant step forward in astronomical research and exploration. Situated at 8,684 feet on Cerro Pachón, near the edge of the Atacama Desert, the facility benefits from a dry and remarkably stable atmosphere, conditions that make it well-suited for astronomical observation.

Read more
SpaceX needs good weather for tonight’s crewed launch — so how’s it looking?
The Ax-4 crew heading to the ISS.

SpaceX, Axiom Space, and NASA are gearing up for a crewed rocket launch in the coming hours, but the mission needs decent weather for it to get underway. So how’s it looking?

Well, following a number of delays over the last couple of weeks due to weather conditions and technical issues, SpaceX looks as ready as ever to blast four Ax-4 crewmembers toward the International Space Station (ISS) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Read more