Gaia is a European Area Company (ESA) mission to create an correct three-dimensional map of greater than a billion stars throughout our[{” attribute=””>Milky Way galaxy and beyond. Although it launched all the way back in 2013, it is still working to accurately map the the motions, luminosity, temperature and composition of the stars in our galaxy.

Along the way it has made numerous discoveries, such as detecting a shake in the Milky Way, the observation of almost 500 explosions in galaxy cores, crystallization in white dwarfs, and discovering a billion-year-old river of stars. It also revealed the total weight of the Milky Way, a direct measurement of the galactic bar in the Milky Way, mysterious fossil spiral arms in the Milky Way, and a new member of the Milky Way family.

Today marks the data of the third data release from Gaia. The first data release was on September 14, 2016, followed by the second data release on April 25, 2018. On December 3, 2020, they did an early third data release with detailed data on more than 1.8 billion stars. All this data is helping to reveal the origin, structure, and evolutionary history of our galaxy.

Today (June 13, 2022), ESA’s Gaia mission releases its new treasure trove of data about our home galaxy. Astronomers describe strange ‘starquakes’, stellar DNA, asymmetric motions, and other fascinating insights in this most detailed Milky Way survey to date.

Gaia is ESA’s mission to create the most accurate and complete multi-dimensional map of the Milky Way. This allows astronomers to reconstruct our home galaxy’s structure and past evolution over billions of years, and to better understand the lifecycle of stars and our place in the Universe.

What’s new in information model 3?

Gaia Knowledge Launch 3 comprises new and improved particulars of practically two billion stars in our galaxy. The catalog consists of new data together with chemical compositions, stellar temperatures, colours, lots, ages, and the velocity at which stars are shifting towards or away from us (radial velocity). A lot of this data was revealed by not too long ago printed information from spectroscopy, a way during which starlight is break up into its constituent colours (like a rainbow). The info additionally consists of particular subsets of stars, reminiscent of those who change brightness over time.

Additionally new on this dataset is the biggest catalog but of binary stars, hundreds of Photo voltaic System objects reminiscent of asteroids and moons of planets, and hundreds of thousands of galaxies and quasars outdoors the Milky Manner.

earthquakes

Probably the most shocking discoveries to emerge from the brand new information is that Gaia is able to detecting starquakes (small actions on the floor of a star) that change the shapes of stars, one thing the observatory was not initially constructed to do. .

Gaia has beforehand discovered radial oscillations that trigger stars to periodically swell and shrink whereas sustaining their spherical form. However Gaia has now additionally detected different vibrations which might be extra like large-scale tsunamis. These nonradial oscillations change the general form of a star and are due to this fact harder to detect.

Gaia discovered robust non-radial stellar earthquakes in hundreds of stars. Gaia additionally revealed such vibrations in stars that had not often been seen earlier than. These stars shouldn’t have tremors in keeping with present idea, whereas Gaia detected them on its floor.

“Starquakes educate us rather a lot about stars, particularly about their inside workings. Gaia is opening up a gold mine for ‘asteroseismology’ of huge stars,” says Conny Aerts of KU Leuven in Belgium, who’s a member of the Gaia collaboration.

The DNA of the celebrities

The fabric from which stars are made can inform us about their birthplace and subsequent journey, and thus in regards to the historical past of the Milky Manner. With at present’s information launch, Gaia reveals the biggest chemical map of the galaxy coupled to 3D motions, from our photo voltaic neighborhood to the smaller galaxies surrounding our personal.

Some stars comprise extra “heavy metals” than others. In the course of the[{” attribute=””>Big Bang, only light elements were formed (hydrogen and helium). All other heavier elements – called metals by astronomers – are built inside stars. When stars die, they release these metals into the gas and dust between the stars called the interstellar medium, out of which new stars form. Active star formation and death will lead to an environment that is richer in metals. Therefore, a star’s chemical composition is a bit like its DNA, giving us crucial information about its origin.

With Gaia, we see that some stars in our galaxy are made of primordial material, while others like our Sun are made of matter enriched by previous generations of stars. Stars that are closer to the center and plane of our galaxy are richer in metals than stars at larger distances. Gaia also identified stars that originally came from different galaxies than our own, based on their chemical composition.

“Our galaxy is a beautiful melting pot of stars,” says Alejandra Recio-Blanco of the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in France, who is a member of the Gaia collaboration.

“This diversity is extremely important, because it tells us the story of our galaxy’s formation. It reveals the processes of migration within our galaxy and accretion from external galaxies. It also clearly shows that our Sun, and we, all belong to an ever-changing system, formed thanks to the assembly of stars and gas of different origins.”

Binary stars, asteroids, quasars, and more

Other papers that are published today reflect the breadth and depth of Gaia’s discovery potential. A new binary star catalog presents the mass and evolution of more than 800 thousand binary systems, while a new asteroid survey comprising 156 thousand rocky bodies is digging deeper into the origin of our Solar System. Gaia is also revealing information about 10 million variable stars, mysterious macro-molecules between stars, as well as quasars and galaxies beyond our own cosmic neighborhood.

“Unlike other missions that target specific objects, Gaia is a survey mission. This means that while surveying the entire sky with billions of stars multiple times, Gaia is bound to make discoveries that other more dedicated missions would miss. This is one of its strengths, and we can’t wait for the astronomy community to dive into our new data to find out even more about our galaxy and its surroundings than we could’ve imagined,” says Timo Prusti, Project Scientist for Gaia at ESA.