ESA releases 3d map with 1.7 billion stars

The European Space Agency has released a 3D map showing about 1.7 billion stars. The data comes from the Gaia satellite, which has a large camera on board and has been gazing into the universe for years.

On its website, the ESA explains that the map shows not only stars from our own Milky Way, but also from other galaxies nearby. Also present are quasars, very bright centers of distant black hole galaxies. The data in the new release of the Gaia star map comes from 22 months of shooting the Universe, and includes images of celestial bodies as far as 8,000 light-years away.

In addition to the representation of the stars on a 3D map, the dataset also contains information about the stars themselves. For example, the brightness and color of many stars is known, and information about movement and speed is also given. In addition, data is also included from other celestial bodies, such as those from about 14,000 asteroids in our solar system.

Gaia was launched in 2013 with the goal of using the billion-pixel camera on board to create a detailed map of the Milky Way. The camera has a structure with 106 ccd image sensors, in addition to a large number of mirrors. The first dataset came out two years ago, and then contained data from about 2 million stars.