2023-10-10 10:53:55
The European Space Agency (ESA) unveiled on Tuesday five updates intended for the publication of the fourth version of the Gaia catalog, in 2025. These new data reveal in particular 500,000 stars in the core of Omega Centauri, but also more precise data concerning more than 150,000 asteroids as well as the Milky Way. The ULB, ULiège, KU Leuven, the University of Antwerp and the Royal Observatory of Belgium are participating in this project.
The Gaia satellite has been mapping the sky since 2014 and revealing stars a million times fainter than what can be seen with the naked eye. A previous update of the catalog of its observations, in June 2022, made it possible to collect data from 1.8 billion stars, thus providing a clearer image of the Milky Way and its surroundings, an important step for the astronomy research. A new update is planned for the end of 2025.
Prior to this publication, ESA and their collaborators, including four Belgian universities and the royal observatory of Belgium, revealed the new data that will be analyzed. These reveal in particular a detailed analysis of the globular cluster Omega Centauri, which has 10 million stars gathered very compactly in the sky. Specific techniques made it possible to distinguish 526,587 stars in the core of this cluster.
Gaia has also captured, more precisely than in the last update, more than 150,000 asteroids from the belt between Mars and Jupiter. In addition, new information will be able to be published concerning the galactic disk of the Milky Way.
1696936872
#Europe #mapping #Milky #reveals #million #stars