Scientists in Germany have created a new family tree of our Milky Way galaxy, showing how it has grown over billions of years from chaotic mergers with smaller galaxies. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/milky-way-family-tree-progenitor-galaxy-collisions-kraken…
Tag: gaia
For 3rd data release, Gaia gazed toward galactic anticenter
The 3rd data release from the Gaia mission will provide astronomers with a “treasure trove” of information they didn’t have before. As they analyze Gaia’s data in the years ahead, we’re sure to learn new and surprising things about our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/gaia-3rd-data-release-edr3-dec-2020…
Epic time-lapse shows what the Milky Way will look like 400,000 years from now
The Gaia space observatory just released its most detailed map of the universe yet, including the trajectories of hundreds of millions of stars. Source: https://www.livescience.com/gaia-map-40000-stars.html
Most accurate map of our galaxy pinpoints 1.8 billion cosmic objects
With new data from the European Gaia spacecraft, astronomers can now explore 1.8 billion cosmic objects in unparalleled detail. Source: https://www.livescience.com/gaia-data-release-best-milky-way-galaxy-map.html
Gaia’s 3rd data release, in numbers
The much-anticipated 3rd data release from the Gaia space observatory happened today. Source: https://earthsky.org/todays-image/graphic-gaias-3rd-data-release-in-numbers…
Gaia space telescope measures solar system’s acceleration
The measurement of the acceleration of our solar system by astronomers of TU Dresden is a scientific highlight of the third Gaia catalog, which is now being released. With its publication on December 3, 2020, at 12:00 , the public will have access to high-precision astronomical data, such as positions, velocities, magnitudes and colors of about 1.8 billion astronomical objects. Source:…
Gaia: Most accurate data ever for nearly two billion stars
Today (3 December), an international team of astronomers announced the most detailed ever catalogue of the stars in a huge swathe of our Milky Way galaxy. The measurements of stellar positions, movement, brightness and colours are in the third early data release from the European Space Agency’s Gaia space observatory, now publicly available. Initial findings include the first optical measurement of the…
Did the Wow! signal come from this star?
Where did the famous mystery Wow! signal, detected in 1977, come from? Astronomer Alberto Caballero might have pinpointed the host star. It’s a sunlike star 1,800 light-years away, in the direction to the center of our Milky Way. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/source-of-wow-signal-in-1977-sunlike-star-2mass-19281982-2640123…
Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero finds possible source of Wow! signal
Amateur astronomer and YouTuber Alberto Caballero, one of the founders of The Exoplanets Channel, has found a small amount of evidence for a source of the notorious Wow! signal. In his paper uploaded to the arXiv preprint server, Caballero describes searching the Gaia database for possible sun-like stars that might host an exoplanet capable of supporting intelligent life. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-11-amateur-astronomer-alberto-caballero-source.html…
How Many Alien Civilizations Are Out There? A New Galactic Survey Holds a Clue.
Here’s a good sign for alien hunters: More than 300 million worlds with similar conditions to Earth are scattered throughout the Milky Way galaxy. A new analysis [PDF] concludes that roughly half of the galaxy’s sunlike stars host rocky worlds in habitable zones where liquid water could pool or flow over the planets’ surfaces. From a report: “This is the science…