Our solar organization is put near the edge of the Milky Way . It ’s a nice part of town , sure , but it does n’t permit for a very clear view of the residuum of the galaxy . That ’s prevented us from study many of the Milky Way ’s central aspects , like whether it has two arms or four , how big it is , how tight it ’s moving , and whether we ’re someday give way to ram headfirst into the Andromeda galaxy .
However , the Gaia project is about spend five years mapping the whole of the Milky Way , answer our most basic questions about its development and social organisation . “ It ’s going to be phenomenal , ” say stargazer Barry F. Madore of the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena , Ca . “ It will change everything . ”
develop by the European Space Agency , and presently being build by EADS Astrium SAS , the € 700 million Gaia space vehicle is just the 2nd such satellite dedicated toastrometryto be put in ambit . Astrometry itself has been practiced for centuries , but the accuracy of ground - based scope is limited by atmospheric upheaval . To particular date , we roll in the hay the length to fewer than 1000 star with a preciseness of 1 percentage . But with the Gaia , researchers gauge they ’ll be capable to evaluate more than 10 million stars with the same faithfulness . As mission scientist Timo Prusti quip to IEEE , “ It ’s going to really be a sledge in fundamental astronomy . ”
The Gaia will launch later this year from Kourou , French Guiana and go in into ambit atLagrange 2(L2 ) , some 932,000 miles ( 1.5 million km ) from earth from Earth , always facing by from the Sun . This posture not only guarantees that the reflexion platform will always have a view unobstructed by the Sun , Earth , or moon , it will continually expose the craft ’s solar jury “ wench ” to its power root .
Gaia is expected to process nearly 8000 principal position per secondly over the course of its five - year missionary station . In all , the spot and velocity of more than a billion star will be mapped . No , literally , the Gaia project will make an incredibly accurate three - dimensional mathematical function of more than a thousand million astronomical stars by the time it ’s through . What ’s more , while the spacecraft is mapping stellar positions , it ’s also study the makeup of each wizard it see , yield a massive Modern information set up for astronomer to use .
The Gaia spacecraft itself measures about 11 measure wide ( 36 feet ) , weigh 2030 kilogram ( 2.2 tons ) , and uses a two - module design with actuation , avionics , and communication machine stored in the service module while the guile pair of optical scope domiciliate in the lading module under a “ thermic collapsible shelter . ” Each scope will focus incoming light source onto a shared 106 CCD array , 4500 x 1966 pixels in sizing . This array is split into three area , each associate with the three primary end of the resume : measuring a star ’s place , chemical substance composition , and velocity .
These scope offer unparalleled preciseness down to magnitude 20 ( that ’s 400,00 time fainter than what your naked eye can see ) which will allow researchers to spot the numerous dark-brown dwarf , distant supernovae , and other crack - fainthearted celestial happening . At order of magnitude 15 , the craft will meausre stars with an accuracy of 24 microarcseconds — roughly the width of a human haircloth if viewed from 1000 km away or the size of it of your thumbnail on the moon as seen from the Earth . That ’s so exact that the length nearby Galax urceolata will be measure with 0.001 - percent truth and those as far as 30,000 low-cal - years will be measured with 20 - percent accuracy .
All of the data point that the array collect is transfer to the ESA ’s most sore ground stations in Cebreros , Spain , and New Norcia , Australia over the course of eight hours every day at the surprisingly flying throughput of 5 Mbit / s. At that rate , it ’s only a matter of clip before the secrets of the milklike Way are revealed to us in full . [ IEEE – ESA – Wikipedia – mental image : ESA / Medialab ]
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