Updates ESA GAIA mission updates

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26 February 2019
ESA's Gaia satellite is on a mission: to map and characterise more than one billion of the stars in the Milky Way. Many of these stars reside in complex, eye-catching clusters scattered throughout our Galaxy and, by studying these stellar groupings, Gaia is revealing much about the formation and evolution of stars in our cosmic home and surroundings.

http://sci.esa.int/gaia/61153-rethinking-everything-we-thought-we-knew-about-star-clusters/

 

[Notebook]

Title Gaia’s first asteroid discoveries
Released 29/04/2019 10:00 am
Copyright ESA/Gaia/DPAC
Description
While scanning the sky to chart a billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, ESA’s Gaia satellite is also sensitive to celestial bodies closer to home, and regularly observes asteroids in our Solar System.
This view shows the orbits of more than 14 000 known asteroids (with the Sun at the centre of the image) based on information from Gaia’s second data release, which was made public in 2018.
The majority of asteroids depicted in this image, shown in bright red and orange hues, are main-belt asteroids, located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter; Trojan asteroids, found around the orbit of Jupiter, are shown in dark red.
In yellow, towards the image centre, are the orbits of several tens of near-Earth asteroids observed by Gaia: these are asteroids that come to within 1.3 astronomical units (AU) to the Sun at the closest approach along their orbit. The Earth circles the Sun at a distance of 1 AU (around 150 million km) so near-Earth asteroids have the potential to come into proximity with our planet.
Most asteroids that Gaia detects are already known, but every now and then, the asteroids seen by ESA's Milky Way surveyor do not match any existing observations. This is the case for the three orbits shown in grey in this view: these are Gaia’s first asteroid discoveries.

http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2019/04/Gaia_s_first_asteroid_discoveries

 

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15 July 2019
On Tuesday 16 July, teams at ESA’s mission control will perform an ‘orbit change manoeuvre’ on the Gaia space observatory – the biggest operation since the spacecraft was launched in 2013.
Gaia is on a mission to survey more than a billion stars, charting the largest three-dimensional map of our galaxy, the Milky Way. In so doing, the spacecraft is revealing the composition, formation and evolution of our galaxy, and a whole lot more.

For the last five and a half years, the spacecraft has travelled in an orbit designed to keep it out of Earth’s shadow, the second Lagrange point.

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/Gaia_s_biggest_operation_since_launch_and_commissioning

 

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16 July 2019
The first direct measurement of the bar-shaped collection of stars at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy has been made by combining data from ESA’s Gaia mission with complementary observations from ground- and space-based telescopes.
The second release of data from ESA’s Gaia star-mapping satellite, published in 2018, has been revolutionising many fields of astronomy. The unprecedented catalogue contains the brightnesses, positions, distance indicators and motions across the sky for more than one billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, along with information about other celestial bodies.

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Gaia/Gaia_starts_mapping_our_galaxy_s_bar

 

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25 July 2019
On 31 March 2017, Jupiter’s moon Europa passed in front of a background star – a rare event that was captured for the first time by ground-based telescopes thanks to data provided by ESA’s Gaia spacecraft.

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/S...y_Europa_blocking_distant_star_thanks_to_Gaia

 

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8 August 2019
Rather than leaving home young, as expected, stellar ‘siblings’ prefer to stick together in long-lasting, string-like groups, finds a new study of data from ESA’s Gaia spacecraft.
Exploring the distribution and past history of the starry residents of our galaxy is especially challenging as it requires astronomers to determine the ages of stars. This is not at all trivial, as ‘average’ stars of a similar mass but different ages look very much alike.
To figure out when a star formed, astronomers must instead look at populations of stars thought to have formed at the same time – but knowing which stars are siblings poses a further challenge, since stars do not necessarily hang out long in the stellar cradles where they formed.

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/S...untangles_the_starry_strings_of_the_Milky_Way

 

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Vast 'star nursery' region found in our galaxy
By Paul Rincon
Science editor, BBC News website

Astronomers have discovered a vast structure in our galaxy, made up of many interconnected "nurseries" where stars are born.
The long, thin filament of gas is a whopping 9,000 light-years long and 400 light-years wide.
It lies around 500 light-years from our Sun, which is relatively close by in astronomical distances.
The discovery, outlined in the journal Nature, came from work to assemble a new map of the Milky Way.
An international team analysed data from the European Gaia space telescope, which was launched in 2013.
The monolithic structure has been dubbed the Radcliffe Wave, in honour of Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51021704

 

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This novel ‘water drop’ antenna lens design for directing radio wave signals was developed by a pair of antenna engineers from ESA and Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology, KTH.
In the same way that optical lenses focus light, waveguide lenses serve to direct electromagnetic radio wave energy in a given direction – for instance to send out a radar or a communication signal – and minimise energy loss in the process.
Traditional waveguide lenses have complex electrically-sensitive ‘dielectric’ material to restrict electromagnetic signals as desired, but this water drop waveguide lens – once its top plate has been added on – comes down purely to its curved shape directing signals through it.

http://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2020/01/Water_drop_antenna_lens

 

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Launched in 2013, ESA’s Gaia satellite has been scanning the sky to measure the positions, distances and motions of more than one billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The goal of the mission is to create the most detailed galactic map ever made, in order to investigate the Milky Way’s past and future history like never before.

http://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/V...e_sky_according_to_Gaia_s_second_data_release

 

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Gaia 'discovery machine' updates star catalogue​

Gaia 'discovery machine' updates star catalogue - BBC News

 

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Gaia continues quest for the ultimate sky map.​

Gaia continues quest for the ultimate sky map

Europe's Gaia space camera tracks everything that shines or moves in our Milky Way galaxy.

www.bbc.co.uk