The Gaia mission, launched almost ten years ago, has already provided astronomers with a wealth of data, each more valuable than the last. Today it reveals half a million stars hidden in a star cluster, hundreds of gravitational lenses and the positions of more than 155,000 asteroids.
This will also interest you
Launched in December 2013, Gaia’s mission is to map our Milky Way. Down to the smallest detail. It thus measures the movements, luminosity, temperature and even the composition of the stars that compose it. The scientists leading the mission have just published their latest findings. Including no fewer than half a million stars that were previously hidden in the heart of a massive star cluster.
Gaia reveals more stars than ever in the Omega-Centauri cluster
Gaia’s previous release counted more than 1.8 billion stars. However, the mission had not yet examined the most populated areas of our sky. Globular clusters are one of them. Remember that this is among the oldest objects in our UniverseUniverse. Enough to make them particularly interesting to astronomers and astronomers. However, it remains difficult to observe them in detail because their kernels are so shiny.
The Gaia mission specifically targeted the largest globular cluster visible from our Earth, the Omega Centauri Cluster or Omega Centauri, located nearly 16,000 light-years light-years away from us. And instead of looking at individual stars, it activated a special mode to image a larger area of the sky around the cluster’s core each time it entered its field of view. A mode not designed for scientific purposes. “We have deployed this incredible cosmic tool at maximum power,” comments Alexey Mints, member of the Gaia collaboration, in a press release from the European Space Agency (ESAESA). In this way, no less than half a million never-before-seen stars were formed.
“With this new data, we can study the structure of the star cluster, how the stars are distributed within it, how they move, and thus create a complete, large-scale map of Omega Centauri,” he said, enthuses the researcher. Eight other densely populated regions are currently being explored by Gaia using the same principle. With the promise of bringing back data that could help pinpoint the center of our Milky Way, further constrain models of galactic evolution, and finally confirm the age of our Milky Way, and why not even the entire universe.
Gravity lenses also in the Gaia hunting range
What was also not included in the definition of Gaia’s mission is that she would become a true expert in the search for gravitational lenses. That’s what astronomers call the phenomenon that occurs when a massive object acts like a cosmic magnifying glass, amplifying the light reaching us from another object behind it.
Gaia has just identified more than 380 strong candidates for very distant lensed quasars. You see, extremely bright and energetic galactic nuclei powered by black holes and revealed by gravitational lensing. And even 50 candidates are considered very likely. A gold mine for cosmologists and also for scientists working on the just launched Euclid mission. The goal is to map the billions of galaxies in our universe. The gravitational lensed quasars discovered by Gaia could serve as a guide for its explorations.
Gaia delivers asteroid orbits with insane precision
Another area where the latest published data from Gaia advances science is knowledge of asteroids. In fact, the mission has just determined the positions and orbits of more than 155,000 of them with an accuracy twenty times greater than that previously available to astronomers. The next data set should perform even better. And also be interested in comets, comets and satellites of the planets of the solar system.
Among other observations from Gaia, faint signals whose origins remain mysterious have been observed in the light from stars or the gas and dust floating between them. Also characterizes the dynamics of 10,000 giant stars, pulsating red giant stars and binary stars and is particularly important for calculating cosmic distances. “This data release demonstrates once again the broad and fundamental value of Gaia, even on topics for which the mission was not originally designed,” concludes Timo Prusti, Gaia project scientist at ESA.