ESA’s Gaia mission data revolutionises astronomy

[FourWheelDrift]

"The new data release, which covers the period between 25 July 2014 and 23 May 2016, pins down the positions of nearly 1.7 billion stars, and with a much greater precision. For some of the brightest stars in the survey, the level of precision equates to Earth-bound observers being able to spot a Euro coin lying on the surface of the Moon."

GAIA CREATES RICHEST STAR MAP OF OUR GALAXY – AND BEYOND

http://sci.esa.int/gaia/60192-gaia-creates-richest...

"ESA’s Gaia mission has produced the richest star catalogue to date, including high-precision measurements of nearly 1.7 billion stars and revealing previously unseen details of our home Galaxy. A multitude of discoveries are on the horizon after this much awaited release, which is based on 22 months of charting the sky. The new data includes positions, distance indicators and motions of more than one billion stars, along with high-precision measurements of asteroids within our Solar System and stars beyond our own Milky Way Galaxy."

https://www.inverse.com/article/44092-what-is-gaia...

[jmorgan]

Just saw this pop up in my twitter feed. Amazing stuff.

[wc98]

enough work in that lot to keep a generation of astronomers busy for an entire career. amazing stuff.

[stew-STR160]

Appears Gaia is redefining distance measurements quite a bit. Some stars/clusters previously measured to be 3-5kpc away turning out to be only about 1... fundamental error in previous measurements there.

[bony_13]

'The Sky at Night' shown on BBC4 last night was dedicated to Gaia and well worth a watch - I assume it will be repeated or is on catchup. I'm currently very sleep deprived and will be going back to watch it again.One fact I do remember was:

'If Gaia was on earth, and you stood on the moon with you thumb up, Gaia could calculate the difference in angle from one side of your thumb to the other.'

Mind-blowing.