The Gaia observatory offers one of the most accurate maps of the Milky Way to date

The Gaia observatory of the European Space Agency (ESA) has made its mission a successful one. This observatory has offered one of the most accurate maps of the Milky Way galaxy with exact positions of nearly 1.8 billion space objects, including stars, nebula, planets, asteroids, etc.

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This powerful space telescope can map more than 1 billion stars to the highest precision and has been mapping space since it started working in 2013. As per an interview of Martin Barstow on Space.com, Gaia observatory had already made a tsunami in astrophysics. Barstow, in-charge of the physics and astronomy department at the University of Leicester, is an important member of Gaia's data processing team. Barstow was seen in a virtual conversation with his fellow researcher, GiorgiaBusso, from the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands.

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About the Gaia telescope

Gaia was launched in space in December 2013. At present, this spacecraft is orbiting the Lagrange- 2 point, which is nearly 1 million miles from Earth. This place is unique as here, the gravitation force between the Sun and the Earth is appropriately balanced, and it is one of the best places to get the best view of the sky and the milky way. It is one of the most advanced telescopic observatories from the European space agency. It can map nearly 100000 stars per minute and 850 million objects per day and can make a proper scan of the whole sky once every two months.

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Data found by the Gaia telescope

Gaia had observed and mapped nearly 1.7 billion space objects, including some asteroids, in 2018. In the 2020 data, the telescope offered more accurate data of more space objects. The present data also provided the motion, positions of the stars, including asteroids and planets.

The royal astronomical society released a video conference on YouTube on 3rd December 2020. Nicholas Walton, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and a part of the Gaia observatory science team, offered some interesting information. He said that they were working with billions of stars that helped them to discover how the stars and other planetary bodies change their position with time. He compared this phenomenon with the monitoring of UK citizens with a tracker to monitor their health. He also added that the Gaia telescope offers detailed information like the dominant stars, exploding stars, dying stars of galaxy, etc.

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According to an article on space.com, researchers were able to find a dead galaxy which the milky way galaxy consumed nearly 10 billion years ago. Additionally, this space observatory from the European space agency also offered data about almost 20 hypervelocity stars in the centre of the galaxy. Furthermore, scientists could point out nearly 1000 stars, which may have hypothetical extraterrestrials like humans.

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