Gaia satellite tagged posts

What Ingredients went into the Galactic Blender to create the Milky Way?

A simulation of a collision between the young Milky Way and a smaller galaxy. Credit: Dr Tobias Buck (AIP/MPIA/NYU)

Our galaxy is a giant ‘smoothie’ of blended stars and gas but a new study tells us where the components came from. In its early days, the Milky Way was like a giant smoothie, as if galaxies consisting of billions of stars, and an enormous amount of gas had been thrown together into a gigantic blender. But a new study picks apart this mixture by analysing individual stars to identify which originated inside the galaxy and which began life outside.

“Although the Milky Way is our home galaxy, we still do not understand how it formed and evolved,” says researcher Sven Buder from the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) and the Au...

Read More

Star Formation Burst in the Milky Way 2-3 billion years ago

The region of the stellar formation Rho Ophiuchi observed by ESA Gaia satellite. The shining dots are stellar clusters with the massive and youngest stars of the region. The dark filaments track the gas and dust distribution, where the new stars are born. This is not a conventional photographic image but the result of the integration of all the received radiation by the satellite during the 22 months of continuous measurements through different filters on the spacecraft. Copyright: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Researchers have found, analyzing data from the Gaia satellite, that a strong star formation burst occurred in the Milky Way about 2 to 3 billion years ago. In this process, more than 50% of the stars that created the galactic disc may have been born...

Read More

How to Weigh Stars with Gravitational Lensing

Image from the PAN-STARRS Telescope at Hawaii from early 2011 with the foreground star Ross 322 (blue square) and the background star (at the centre of the green circle) which will be traversed by Ross 322 in the next few weeks. By summer 2015, Ross 322 had moved to the position of the blue triangle (measured by Gaia). Since then, it has been moving along the blue-red line and is currently close to the position of the background star.

Image from the PAN-STARRS Telescope at Hawaii from early 2011 with the foreground star Ross 322 (blue square) and the background star (at the centre of the green circle) which will be traversed by Ross 322 in the next few weeks. By summer 2015, Ross 322 had moved to the position of the blue triangle (measured by Gaia). Since then, it has been moving along the blue-red line and is currently close to the position of the background star.

Astronomers have published the predictions of the passages of foreground stars in front of background stars. A team of astronomers, using ultra-precise measurements from the Gaia satellite, have accurately forecast two passages in the next months...

Read More

Using Stellar ‘Twins’ to Reach Outer Limits of the Galaxy

Two 'twin' stars with identical spectra observed by the La Silla Telescope. Since it is known that one star is 40 parsecs away, the difference in their apparent brightnesses allows calculation of the second star's distance. Credit: Carolina Jofre

Two ‘twin’ stars with identical spectra observed by the La Silla Telescope. Since it is known that one star is 40 parsecs away, the difference in their apparent brightnesses allows calculation of the second star’s distance. Credit: Carolina Jofre

A new, highly accurate method of measuring distances between stars, could be used to measure the size of the galaxy, enabling greater understanding of how it evolved. Using a technique which searches out stellar ‘twins’, they have been able to measure distances between stars with far greater precision than is possible using typical model-dependent methods. It will complement to Gaia satellite, which is creating a 3D map of the sky over 5 yrs, and could aid in the understanding of fundamental astrophysical processes at work far away.

“....

Read More