New map of Milky Way contains over a billion stars

ESA (the European Space Agency) has released a colossal star catalog detailing the precise positions and brightness of over a billion stellar bodies spread across the Milky Way. Created from data harvested by the agency’s Gaia satellite, the new catalog, which is by far the largest of its kind, is a significant step on the road to the probe’s ultimate mission of creating the most precise and comprehensive 3D map of our galaxy ever.

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CrazyNeutrino said:

New map of Milky Way contains over a billion stars

is a significant step on the road to the probe’s ultimate mission of creating the most precise and comprehensive 3D map of our galaxy ever.

more…

I thought they just said it already was the most precise and comprehensive 3D map of our galaxy evah.

The Rev Dodgson said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

New map of Milky Way contains over a billion stars

is a significant step on the road to the probe’s ultimate mission of creating the most precise and comprehensive 3D map of our galaxy ever.

more…

I thought they just said it already was the most precise and comprehensive 3D map of our galaxy evah.

Maybe they thought it was only nearly evah and so they then thought they needed to do one that would last for more than evah?

CrazyNeutrino said:

New map of Milky Way contains over a billion stars

ESA (the European Space Agency) has released a colossal star catalog detailing the precise positions and brightness of over a billion stellar bodies spread across the Milky Way. Created from data harvested by the agency’s Gaia satellite, the new catalog, which is by far the largest of its kind, is a significant step on the road to the probe’s ultimate mission of creating the most precise and comprehensive 3D map of our galaxy ever.

more…

Great. I’ve been waiting impatiently for this.

mollwollfumble said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

New map of Milky Way contains over a billion stars

ESA (the European Space Agency) has released a colossal star catalog detailing the precise positions and brightness of over a billion stellar bodies spread across the Milky Way. Created from data harvested by the agency’s Gaia satellite, the new catalog, which is by far the largest of its kind, is a significant step on the road to the probe’s ultimate mission of creating the most precise and comprehensive 3D map of our galaxy ever.

more…

Great. I’ve been waiting impatiently for this.

Original press release at http://sci.esa.int/gaia/58272-gaia-s-billion-star-map-hints-at-treasures-to-come/

Billion star catalogue accessible at http://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/

Parallax histogram peaks at a parallax of 1.0. What units? If that’s in mas = milli-arc-seconds then the average distance to a star of measured parallax is 1000 parsecs. The Sun is 8000 parsecs from the centre of the Milky Way, so that agrees nicely with the expected scope of Gaia measurements.

Somewhat embarrassingly, about 25,000 stars have been given an impossible negative parallax.

I was hoping for the following video, but didn’t expect it so soon after the catalogue.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160926.html

https://youtu.be/XORui0wFKnE

“In the first sequence of the video, an illustration of the Milky Way is shown that soon resolves into a three-dimensional visualization of Gaia star data. A few notable stars are labelled with their common names, while others stars are labelled with numbers from Gaia’s catalog. Eventually the viewer arrives at our home star Sol (the Sun), then resolving the reflective glow of its third planet: Earth. The featured video is based on just over 600,000 stars, but Gaia is on track to measure the parallax distances to over one billion stars over its planned five year mission.”