A dramatic visualisation shows these subsets, and the bridge of stars between the two systems. Gaia data additionally deconstruct the two largest companion galaxies to the Milky Way, the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, allowing researchers to see their different stellar populations. This represents a major improvement in Gaia EDR3 with respect to Gaia DR2. The increase in precision is because Gaia has now measured the stars more times and over a longer interval of time. They are twice as precise as the proper motions released in the previous Gaia DR2. These proper motions are released as part of the Gaia Early Data Release 3 (Gaia EDR3).

The trails on this image show how 40 000 stars, all located within 100 parsecs (326 light years) of the solar system, will move across the sky in the next 400 thousand years. To the human eye this movement – known as proper motion – is imperceptible, but Gaia is measuring it with more and more precision. Over a year the Sun accelerates towards the centre of the Galaxy by 7 mm per second, compared with its speed along its orbit of about 230 kilometres a second. This acceleration is gentle, and is what would be expected from a system in a circular orbit. They also confirm that the Solar system is accelerating in its orbit around the Galaxy. The researchers use these data to predict how the star background will change in the next 1.6 million years. The new data include exceptionally accurate measurements of the 300,000 stars within the closest 326 light years to the Sun. Gaia also tracks the changing brightness and positions of the stars over time across the line of sight (their so-called proper motion), and by splitting their light into spectra, measures how fast they are moving towards or away from the Sun and assesses their chemical composition. This release brings the total to just under 2 billion stars, whose positions are significantly more accurate than in the earlier data. ) Primary title, Projet Gaia Year published, 2020. Two previous releases included the positions of 1.6 billion stars. Summary of all detailed information about the game (release date, ean code, weight, size. On Earth this is made more difficult by the blurring of the Earth's atmosphere, but in space the measurements are only limited by the optics of the telescope. Knowing that tiny shift in the positions of stars allows their distances to be calculated. In this case astronomers use the observatory to continuously scan the sky, measuring the apparent change in the positions of stars over time, resulting from the Earth's movement around the Sun. Methods: The validation was mainly carried out using an internal analysis of the photometry. The primary objective of Gaia is measure stellar distances using the parallax method. Aims: We describe the photometric content of the second data release of the Gaia project (Gaia DR2) and its validation along with the quality of the data. At L2 the gravitational forces between the Earth and Sun are balanced, so the spacecraft stays in a stable position, allowing long-term essentially unobstructed views of the sky. Launched in 2013, Gaia operates in an orbit around the so-called Lagrange 2 (L2) point, located 1.5 million kilometres behind the Earth in the direction away from the Sun.

Gaia project release date