The most detailed 3D map of the Milky Way includes nearly 2 billion stars

You can’t just drive a Google maps car around the Milky Way to schematize it. Fortunately, new information gathered by the European Space Agency’s Gaia Observatory provides the most detailed map of the galaxy to date. The project map now includes nearly 2 billion stars and helps the agency trace the history of the Milky Way.

“The new Gaia data promises to be a treasure trove for astronomers,” Jos de Bruijne, deputy scientist of the Gaia project at ESA, said in a statement.

The new information not only brings the total number of stars mapped over seven years to nearly 2 billion, but it includes “a detailed census of over 300,000 stars in our cosmic neighborhood,” which means stars within 326. light years from the sun. . This number of 300,000 is believed to be 92% of the stars in this region. That’s 100 times more stars than the old data, which goes back to 1991.

The new data provides measurements of location, motion and brightness that are “orders of magnitude” more accurate than the old information. In fact, the data is so precise that it reveals that the path of the sun is not a straight line, but slightly curved.

“Gaia has been looking at the sky for seven years, mapping the positions and speeds of stars,” said Caroline Harper, head of space science at the British Space Agency. “Thanks to its telescopes, we have in our possession today the most detailed 3D billionaire atlas ever assembled.”

The new map helps astronomers make predictions, envisioning the movements of 40,000 stars 1.6 million years into the future, the agency reports.

This week’s post is the first of two parts, with the second expected in 2022. Gaia’s “stellar census” began in 2013.