{"id":461259,"date":"2023-10-15T16:11:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-15T14:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/innovationorigins.com\/?p=461259"},"modified":"2023-10-15T16:11:00","modified_gmt":"2023-10-15T14:11:00","slug":"esas-gaia-mission-reveals-more-stars-more-cosmic-lenses-and-more-asteroids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/en\/esas-gaia-mission-reveals-more-stars-more-cosmic-lenses-and-more-asteroids\/","title":{"rendered":"ESA’s Gaia mission reveals more stars, more cosmic lenses, and more asteroids"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Report by ESA<\/a> \/ Science & Exploration<\/a> \/ Space Science<\/a> \/ Gaia<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ESA’s Gaia mission<\/a> has released a new goldmine of knowledge about our galaxy and beyond. Among other findings, the star surveyor surpasses its planned potential to reveal half a million new and faint stars in a massive cluster, identify over 380 possible cosmic lenses, and pinpoint the positions of more than 150,000 asteroids within the Solar System.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaia is mapping our galaxy and beyond in extraordinary multi-dimensional detail, completing the most accurate stellar census ever. The mission is painting a detailed picture of our place in the Universe, enabling us to understand the diverse objects within it better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mission\u2019s latest \u2018focused product release\u2019 – announced on October 10th – builds further on this, providing many new and improved insights into the space around us. The release brings exciting and unexpected science: findings that go far beyond what Gaia was initially designed to discover and dig deep into our cosmic history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So \u2013 what\u2019s new from Gaia?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half a million new stars<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Gaia\u2019s third data release (DR3)<\/a> contained data on over 1.8 billion stars, building a pretty complete view of the Milky Way and beyond. However, there remained gaps in our mapping. Gaia had not yet fully explored areas of sky that were especially densely packed with stars, leaving these comparatively unexplored \u2013 and overlooking stars shining less brightly than their many neighbors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Globular clusters<\/a> are a key example of this. These clusters are some of the oldest objects in the Universe, making them especially valuable to scientists looking at our cosmic past. Unfortunately, their bright cores, chock-full of stars, can overwhelm telescopes attempting to get a clear view. As such, they remain missing jigsaw pieces in our maps of the Universe.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/a>
<\/div><\/div>
The Milky Way Weighs 3 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 Tons<\/div>
How do you weigh a galaxy and how much does such a galaxy weigh anyway? An international team of astronomers from the European Southern Observatory tried to find out.<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

To patch the gaps in our maps, Gaia selected Omega Centauri, the largest globular cluster seen from Earth and a great example of a \u2018typical\u2019 cluster. Rather than just focusing on individual stars, as it typically would, Gaia enabled a special mode to map a wider patch of sky surrounding the cluster\u2019s core every time it came into view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Gaia<\/a>
Gaia reveals crowded core of massive star cluster\u202f<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“In\u202fOmega\u202fCentauri,\u202fwe\u202fdiscovered\u202fover\u202fhalf\u202fa\u202fmillion\u202fnew\u202fstars\u202fGaia hadn’t\u202fseen\u202fbefore\u202f\u2013 from\u202fjust\u202fone\u202fcluster”, says lead author Katja Weingrill of the Leibniz-Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), Germany, and a member of the Gaia collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It\u2019s not just patching up holes in our mapping, although this is valuable in itself,” adds co-author and Gaia Collaboration member Alexey Mints, also of the AIP. “Our data allowed us to detect stars too close together to be properly measured in Gaia’s regular pipeline. With the new data, we can study the cluster\u2019s structure, how the constituent stars are distributed, how they\u2019re moving, and more, creating a complete large-scale map of Omega Centauri. It\u2019s using Gaia to its full potential \u2013 we\u2019ve deployed this amazing cosmic tool at maximum power.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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10 times more stars: Comparing two Gaia views of Omega Centauri (slider)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This finding not only meets but actually exceeds Gaia\u2019s planned potential. The team used an observing mode to ensure that all of Gaia\u2019s instruments ran smoothly. “We didn\u2019t expect to ever use it for science, which makes this result even more exciting,” adds Katja.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new stars revealed in Omega Centauri mark one of the most crowded regions explored by Gaia so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaia is currently exploring eight more regions in this way, with the results to be included in Gaia Data Release 4<\/a>. These data will help astronomers to truly understand what is happening within these cosmic building blocks, a crucial step for scientists aiming to confirm the age of our galaxy, locate its center, figure out whether it has gone through any past collisions, verify how stars change through their lifetimes, constrain our models of galactic evolution, and ultimately infer the possible age of the Universe itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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