Gaia is ESA’s mission to create the most accurate and complete multidimensional map of the Milky Way. He recently released a new treasure trove of data on the Milky Way, which describes strange “star tremors”, stellar DNA, asymmetric movements and other fascinating insights.
Release 3 of Gaia data includes new and updated details about about two billion stars in our galaxy. The chemical compositions, stellar temperatures, colors, masses, age and speed at which stars travel to or far from us are all included in the catalog (radial velocity). Recently released spectroscopic data provided much of this information. It also has certain subsets of stars, such as those that change their brightness over time.
This image shows four sky maps made with the new data from ESA Gaia, published on June 13, 2022. © ESA / Gaia / DPAC; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
This dataset contains the most comprehensive list of binary stars, asteroids and moons on the planets in the solar system, as well as millions of galaxies and quasars outside the Milky Way.
star tremors
Gaia’s ability to identify stellar tremors is one of the most impressive discoveries in the new data. An earthquake is vaguely like an earthquake that changes the shape of the stars. These tremors reveal more about the inner workings of the star.
In thousands of stars, Gaia found intense non-radial stellar tremors. He also revealed unusual vibrations of stars that had never been observed before. According to current theory, these stars should not have any tremors; however, Gaia found them on their surface.
The DNA of the stars
The composition of the stars can potentially tell about their birthplace and their journey after that, hence the history of the Milky Way. With today’s release, Gaia unveils the largest chemical map of the galaxy, combined with 3D movements, from our solar quarter to the smaller galaxies around ours.
Some stars are made of heavier metals. After death, these stars release these metals into the gas and dust between the stars, called the interstellar medium, from which new stars form. Active star formation and death create an environment enriched with metals. Therefore, the chemical composition of the star is similar to its DNA, which gives us important information about its origin.
Gaia also revealed stars with primary material. Metals are more abundant in stars that are closer to the center and the plane of the galaxy than in stars that are farther away. Based on their chemical composition, Gaia can identify stars that originate from galaxies other than our own.
Alejandra Resio-Blanco of the Cote d’Azur Observatory in France, a member of the Gaia Collaboration, said: “Our galaxy is a beautiful melting pot of stars. This diversity is extremely important because it tells us the story of the formation of our galaxy. It reveals the processes of migration in our galaxy and accumulation of external galaxies. It also shows that our Sun and all of us belong to an ever-changing system formed by a combination of stars and gas of various origins.
Binary stars, asteroids, quasars, etc.
A new catalog of binary stars details the mass and history of more than 800,000 binary systems, while a new study of asteroids on 156,000 rocky bodies reveals more about the origins of our solar system. Gaia has also discovered about 10 million variable stars, mysterious macromolecules between stars and quasars and galaxies outside our space neighborhood.
This image shows the orbits of more than 150,000 asteroids in a Gaia 3 message, from the inner parts of the solar system to Trojan asteroids at a distance from Jupiter, with different color codes. The yellow circle in the center represents the Sun. Blue is the inner part of the solar system, where asteroids close to Earth intersect Mars and Earth’s planets. The main belt, between Mars and Jupiter, is green. Jupiter’s Trojans are red. Acknowledgments: P. Tanga (Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur) © ESA / Gaia / DPAC; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Timo Prousti, a researcher on the Gaia project at ESA, said: “Unlike other site-specific missions, Gaia is a research mission. This means that Gaia is obliged to make discoveries that other more dedicated missions would miss while exploring the entire sky with billions of stars many times. This is one of its strengths, and we can’t wait for the astronomical community to dive into our new data to discover more about our galaxy and its surroundings than we can imagine.
Release 3 of Gaia data was presented during a briefing on virtual media in
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