http://sci.esa.int/gaia/59004-two-million-stars-on-the-move/

Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4xuA-OeaBc

Put it on loop and use it as a screensaver. When viewing, I find it useful to concentrate on a small patch of relatively slow moving stars

The changing face of our Galaxy is revealed in a new video from ESA’s Gaia mission. The motion of two million stars is traced 5 million years into the future. This video shows the 2 057 050 stars from the TGAS sample, with the addition of 24 320 bright stars from the Hipparcos Catalogue. The frames in the video are separated by 750 years. The stripes visible in the early frames reflect the way Gaia scans the sky.

Some of the stars appear to dart across the sky with very high velocities: for some stars, this is an effect of their close passage to the Sun – for example, in about 1.35 million years, the star Gliese 710 will pass within about 13 500 au (10 trillion kilometres) from the Sun. Other stars seem to trace arcs from one side of the sky to the other, passing close to the galactic poles, accelerating and decelerating in the process. After a few million years, the plane of the Milky Way appears to have shifted towards the right: this is mainly the consequence of the motion of the Sun.

Gaia’s second data release, in April 2018, will include not only the positions, but also distances and proper motions for over one billion stars, as well as radial velocities for some of them.

Very impressive, but the video you linked is a shortened version. Here’s the full five million years:

The motion of two million stars

I’mBubblecar said:

Very impressive, but the video you linked is a shortened version. Here’s the full five million years:

The motion of two million stars

Thanks for that. I’d wondered why my version was only one million years.

mollwollfumble said:

I’mBubblecar said:

Very impressive, but the video you linked is a shortened version. Here’s the full five million years:

The motion of two million stars

Thanks for that. I’d wondered why my version was only one million years.

Do they have a YEC version

Cymek said:

mollwollfumble said:

I’mBubblecar said:

Very impressive, but the video you linked is a shortened version. Here’s the full five million years:

The motion of two million stars

Thanks for that. I’d wondered why my version was only one million years.

Do they have a YEC version

A what version? Young executives club?

mollwollfumble said:

Cymek said:

mollwollfumble said:

I’m
Thanks for that. I’d wondered why my version was only one million years.

Do they have a YEC version

A what version? Young executives club?

Young Earth Creationist

I knew I shouldn’t have asked.

impressive

and when the whole universe is mapped

it will be even more impressive

most impressive

darth vader breath

But US subs are still bumping in to underwater mountains

when all surfaces of planets are mapped

it will be truly impressive

Tau.Neutrino said:

impressive
and when the whole universe is mapped
it will be even more impressive
most impressive
darth vader breath

This is just 2 million stars.

The full first catalogue from Gaia already has 1 billion stars, eventually covering a full third of the Milky Way’s 100 billion stars. Now that is impressive.

> But US subs are still bumping in to underwater mountains

They are?

In older news from Gaia:

27 October 2016 While scanning the sky to measure the position of over one billion stars in our Galaxy, ESA’s Gaia satellite has detected two rare instances of stars whose light was temporarily boosted by other celestial objects passing across their lines of sight.

24 January 2017 Whilst best known for its surveys of the stars and mapping the Milky Way in three dimensions, ESA’s Gaia has many more strings to its bow. Among them, its contribution to our understanding of the asteroids that litter the Solar System. Now, for the first time, Gaia is not only providing information crucial to understanding known asteroids, it has also started to look for new ones, previously unknown to astronomers.

Gaia’s asteroids. They are concentrated along the plane of the solar system.