Some of those will be foreground stars in the Milky Way that happened to be in the way, but it should include roughly the brightest 1% of stars in the Andromeda galaxy. With Gaps, Gaia has measured the brightness over time for every star in the direction of the Andromeda galaxy. A photometric survey measures the brightness of stars and how they change over time. The data includes something called Gaps: the Gaia Andromeda photometric survey. Gaia is not just measuring the stars in our own galaxy, it also measures those in the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy. Radial velocity measurements can also help us find hidden objects, such as planets and brown dwarfs (extremely faint stars with low mass), from the tiny wobbles they cause as they orbit a host star. This can tell us things about our galaxy’s history, such as which stars may have come from other galaxies and merged with our own in the past. This means we now have not only the best map of where the galaxy’s stars are now, but we can track their motions forward to see how things will change, and backward to see how things used to be. But the latest data also shows how quickly stars are moving away from us or towards us, something we call the stars’ radial velocities.īy combining the radial velocity with the proper motions, we can find out how quickly stars are moving in three dimensions as they orbit the Milky Way. Previous data included the motions of stars in two dimensions: up-down and left-right (known collectively as stars’ proper motions). The latest release of data contains the largest three-dimensional map of the Milky Way ever produced - showing how the stars in our galaxy are travelling. Secrets of our galaxy’s past and futureĮverything in space is moving, and the stars are no exception. Here are five of our favourite insights that the data might provide. There’s a lot to make astronomers excited. In addition to measuring the stars’ positions, speeds and brightness, the satellite has collected data on a huge range of other objects. The Gaia satellite was launched in 2013, with the aim of measuring the precise positions of a billion stars. The European Space Agency’s (Esa) Gaia mission has just released new data.
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