The ESA's Gaia spacecraft has created the most detailed map of the Milky Way galaxy. Estimates of the number of stars in our galaxy range from 100-400 billion, compared to about a trillion in the neighboring Andromeda galaxy:
The Milky Way has been mapped in greater detail than ever before. And a first quick look indicates that our home galaxy is larger in extent than scientists had thought before, says Gisella Clementini, an astronomer at the Astronomical Observatory of Bologna in Italy.
Today, at the European Space Astronomy Centre in Madrid, the European Space Agency (ESA) released the first data from its €750 million Gaia star-mapping mission. The new catalog contains sky positions for 1.1 billion stars, 400 million of which have never been seen before. For many stars, the positional accuracy is 300 microarcseconds—the width of a human hair, seen from a distance of 30 kilometers—positions that will help astronomers better determine the 3D layout of the galaxy. "This is far better than anything we've ever had before," says project scientist Timo Prusti of ESA's science and technology center ESTEC in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. "It's a milestone."
[...] A second data release, planned for late 2017, will include even more accurate positions—in some cases up to 10 microarcseconds, or a human hair at a distance of 1000 kilometers. The second release will also contain distances and motions for all 1.1 billion stars
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The European Space Agency's Gaia mission has released data on 1.7 billion stars, including velocity data for 7 million:
Wednesday was the day astronomers said goodbye to the old Milky Way they had known and loved and hello to a new view of our home galaxy. A European Space Agency mission called Gaia just released a long-awaited treasure trove of data: precise measurements of 1.7 billion stars. It's unprecedented for scientists to know the exact brightness, distances, motions and colors of more than a billion stars. The information will yield the best three-dimensional map of our galaxy ever.
"This is a very big deal. I've been working on trying to understand the Milky Way and the formation of the Milky Way for a large fraction of my scientific career, and the amount of information this is revealing in some sense is thousands or even hundreds of thousands of times larger than any amount of information we've had previously," said David Hogg, an astrophysicist at New York University and the Flatiron Institute. "We're really talking about an immense change to our knowledge about the Milky Way."
Also included are the precise positions of more than 14,000 known asteroids, with more asteroids promised in future data releases.
About the data release:
The second data release (DR2), currently scheduled for 25 April 2018, will be based on 22 months of observations made between 25 July 2014 and 23 May 2016. It will include positions, parallaxes and proper motions for about 1.3 billion stars and positions of an additional 200 million stars, red and blue photometric data for about 1.1 billion stars and single colour photometry for an additional 400 million stars, and median radial velocities for about 6 million stars between magnitude 4 and 13. It will also contain data for over 13,000 selected Solar System objects. Since the data processing procedure links individual Gaia observations with particular sources on the sky, in some cases the association of observations with sources will be different in the second data release. Consequently some source identification numbers will be different in DR2 than in DR1. The third data release potentially will include orbital solutions for many binary stars and classifications for spectroscopically "well behaved" objects, as well as improved positions, parallaxes and proper motions. The fourth data release potentially will include variable star classifications, complete Solar System results, and non single-star catalogues. The complete final Gaia catalogue is currently scheduled for 2022, three years after the end of the nominal five-year mission. It would be pushed back if the mission is extended to nine years. The number of releases between DR2 and the final release has not yet been decided.
Also at ESA, Science Magazine, and The Verge.
Previously: European Space Agency's Gaia Spacecraft Maps Over a Billion Stars in the Milky Way
ESA's Second Batch of Gaia Data Coming in April 2018
(Score: 4, Touché) by bob_super on Friday September 16 2016, @05:28PM
> 1.1 billion stars (...)
> For many stars, the positional accuracy is 300 microarcseconds—the width of a human hair, seen from a distance of 30 kilometers
How can humanity be so smart, yet so amazingly stupid?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @05:54PM
There's billions and billions [youtube.com] of stars in our galaxy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @09:21PM
That's great! We have enough to get to naming one after each and every person, is what I'm hearing. Can we start selling naming rights to fund NASA at like $5/apiece?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday September 16 2016, @10:39PM
That's kind of a neat idea.
That is, until an alien race living near a star called Maymay McMemeface file a formal protest using relativistic weapons.
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(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @10:06PM
the width of a human hair, seen from a distance of 30 kilometers
Convenient, to have data that nobody can verify except from the organizers of this hoax. Refugees are drowning in the fringes of the EU, and there are real, actual problems that humanity could be looking into, and instead billions are pumped to hopelessly keep kicking this can along this pretentious fantasy.
This is the greatest hoax ever, people. Cleverly done, but it is over.
Set up a telescope. There IS no curvature of the Earth. Set up a gyroscope. There IS no spinning of the Earth.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday September 16 2016, @10:48PM
The Earth is flat, but it's OK because the Universe is a simulation [independent.co.uk].
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(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Sunday September 18 2016, @03:55PM
"The universe is a simulation" is equivalent to "The universe is real".
A simulation is a process which determines new states based on some rules. It can be used to model reality because, guess what, it was inspired by it, reality has new states that can be modeled after some rules (we dunno the ultimate rules, and if we did we would not be able to prove them as such)
Reality is simply the simulation of which we are part of. Reality for a chess piece is the configuration of the board. Because the cat paw that messes the board does not mess the system called the game of chess, only messes with its representation. The positions of other pieces affect the piece, that is reality for it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 16 2016, @10:58PM
There IS no curvature of the Earth.
You can observe the curvature of the Earth from the air as an obvious counterexample. Or you can circumnavigate the world as another example. And really, what do you think human launched satellites are anyway?
Set up a gyroscope. There IS no spinning of the Earth.
Foucault's pendulum [wikipedia.org] was an early counterexample that demonstrated the rotating frame of reference of the Earth. And of course, you ignore the visual effects of stars, Moon, and Sun rotating around the Earth.
I'm not sure what the point is of assertions that can be readily falsified with a little effort. Maybe you should just do that little effort and then cross these assertions off your list of beliefs?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @01:39AM
I'm not sure what the point is of assertions that can be readily falsified with a little effort. Maybe you should just do that little effort and then cross these assertions off your list of beliefs?
The "point" was to get you to respond to an obvious troll. And it worked too.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 17 2016, @09:33AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @10:29AM
Why do you think this is an obvious troll? This guy has posted before.
Oh wait, you're right. that guy [soylentnews.org] has posted before. In fact, it seems like that same guy posts more than anyone else. I wonder why he didn't make TMB's [soylentnews.org] lists [soylentnews.org]?
Oh wait. That guy is me. I don't remember posting that. Hmm...I guess it must be my MPD [wikipedia.org] acting up again. Darn it!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 17 2016, @02:56PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 18 2016, @04:23AM
Clearly, you don't recall posting this [soylentnews.org]. Even when people post anonymously, they often leave a pattern which can be used to match their work to previous posts. This guy leaves a very obvious one.
Nope. Wasn't me.
Whatever "pattern" you're using to link that post (or, in fact, any post in that thread) to me, isn't very accurate.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 18 2016, @09:43AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 18 2016, @04:30AM
Clearly, you don't recall posting this. Even when people post anonymously, they often leave a pattern which can be used to match their work to previous posts. This guy leaves a very obvious one.
Just to help you refine your "pattern", I posted this [soylentnews.org] and this [soylentnews.org].
Good luck with that!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @09:31AM
Set up a telescope, and see if you can find any curvature.
Set up a gyroscope, and see if you can detect any spinning.
I'm not sure what the point is of assertions that can be readily falsified with a little effort. Maybe you should just do that little effort (telescope, gyroscope) and then cross these assertions off your list of beliefs?
Alternatively, you can choose to remain an armchair critic, and keep regurgitating 'facts' that you have been spoon fed from birth.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 17 2016, @09:36AM
Set up a telescope, and see if you can find any curvature.
Set up a gyroscope, and see if you can detect any spinning.
Why would a telescope detect curvature? And I've already pointed out how the pendulum, which operates on the same principles as the gyroscope detected rotation. A gyroscope would as well. I would suggest that you set up a gyroscope and detect that spinning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @04:13PM
Why would a telescope detect curvature?
The hypothesis is that the Earth is a convex sphere of 6397 km radius. This is an easily debunked hypothesis, as with the help of a telescope objects can be trivially spotted "behind" this hypothesized curvature. Therefore, the Earth does not have a shape consistent with that of a convex sphere that is 6397 km in radius.
A gyroscope would as well. I would suggest that you set up a gyroscope and detect that spinning.
No, it will not detect any rotation.
You can follow this very sane suggestion of yours and see this for yourself.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 17 2016, @08:38PM
The hypothesis is that the Earth is a convex sphere of 6397 km radius. This is an easily debunked hypothesis, as with the help of a telescope objects can be trivially spotted "behind" this hypothesized curvature. Therefore, the Earth does not have a shape consistent with that of a convex sphere that is 6397 km in radius.
And we already have people who did that observation and came to different conclusions.
No, it will not detect any rotation.
I already did this with a pendulum which works on the same principle. There are several publicly viewable pendulums that swing 24 hours a day and show the motion in question. There are numerous other observations such as time zones and when the Sun is above the horizon, artificial satellites, the shadow of the Earth on the Moon, and of course, direct observation of Earth from space. There's the rotation of the entire sky around Earth.
So when you say you made a few observations and came to different conclusions than other people, including myself have with considerably more data, then I have to conclude that your observations are simply in error or didn't happen at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @11:43AM
Yup.
Just like gravity. What it was couldn't be determined, so they made it the law.
Those scientists are just completely out of control.