Gaia 3d Star Map

In 2015 herve bouy from the center for astrobiology csic inta in spain and joao alves from the university of vienna austria brought the hipparcos data to life rendering the star maps in 3d.

Gaia 3d star map. Gaias first data release in 2016 offered information on the positions and brightness of 1142 billion stars but it included only the distances and motions of a subset of 2 million stars. On its way to assembling the most detailed 3d map ever made of our milky way galaxy gaia has pinned down the precise position on the sky and the brightness of 1142 million stars. Gaia gaia is an ambitious mission to chart a three dimensional map of our galaxy the milky way in the process revealing the composition formation and evolution of the galaxy. Hipparcos was launched in 1989 and remained in operation until 1993.

The image above and an easier to scan version below was produced by gaia the european space agency craft whose mission is to produce a detailed three dimensional map of the stars our galaxy. Ive processed the programs first batch of data to determine the 3d position of about 2 million stars. Europe making a 3d map of the stars using gaia by caleb henry february 1 2018 the european space agencys gaia astrometry observatory undergoes pre launch preparation at europes south american. Gaia is an esa mission to survey more than one billion stars in our galaxy and its local neighbourhood in order to build the most precise 3d map of the milky way and answer questions about its structure origin and evolution.