#Gaia project race boards software
#Gaia project race boards plus

вЂњEven in the neighbourhood of the Sun, which is the region we thought we understood best, Gaia is revealing new and exciting features.вЂќ вЂњGaia will greatly advance our understanding of the Universe on all cosmic scales,вЂќВ says Timo Prusti, Gaia project scientist at ESA.

This includes the signature of different types of white dwarfs вЂ“ the dead remnants of stars like our Sun вЂ“ such that a differentiation can be made between those with hydrogen-rich cores and those dominated by helium.Д¬ombined with Gaia measurements of star velocities, the diagram enables astronomers to distinguish between various populations of stars of different ages that are located in different regions of the Milky Way, such as the disc and the halo, and that formed in different ways.В Further scrutiny suggests that theВ fast-moving stars thought to belong to the halo encompass two stellar populations thatВ originated via two different formation scenarios, calling for more detailedВ investigations. Named after the two astronomers who devised it in the early twentieth century, the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram compares the intrinsic brightness of stars with their colour and is a fundamental tool to study populations of stars and their evolution.ДЄ new version of this diagram, based on four million stars within five thousand light-years from theВ Sun selected from the Gaia catalogue, reveals many fine details for the first time. These sources are used to define a reference frame for the celestial coordinates of all objects in the Gaia catalogue, something that is routinely done in radio waves but now for the first time is also available at optical wavelengths. A much larger asteroid sample will be compiled in GaiaвЂ™s future releases.ДЇurther afield, Gaia closed in on the positions of half a million distant quasars, bright galaxies powered by the activity of the supermassive black holes at their cores. Gaia also observes objects in our Solar System: the second data release comprises the positions of more than 14В 000 known asteroids, which allows precise determination of their orbits. It also contains the velocities along the line of sight of a subset of seven million stars, the surface temperatures of about a hundred million and the effect of interstellar dust on 87 million.

#Gaia project race boards plus

The comprehensive dataset provides a wide range of topics for the astronomy community.ДЄs well as positions, the data include brightness information of all surveyed stars and colour measurements of nearly all, plus information on how the brightness and colour of half a million variable stars change over time.

#Gaia project race boards software

вЂњThe second Gaia data release represents a huge leap forward with respect to ESAвЂ™s Hipparcos satellite, GaiaвЂ™s predecessor and the first space mission for astrometry, which surveyed some 118В 000 stars almost thirty years ago,вЂќ says Anthony Brown of Leiden University, The Netherlands.ДЄnthony is the chair of the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium Executive, overseeing the large collaboration of about 450 scientists and software engineers entrusted with the task of creating the Gaia catalogue from the satellite data. From the most accurate parallax measurements, about ten per cent of the total, astronomers can directly estimate distances to individual stars. The new catalogue lists the parallax and velocity across the sky, or proper motion, for more than 1.3 billion stars.

WithВ these accurate measurements it is possible to separate the parallax of stars вЂ“В an apparent shift on theВ sky caused by EarthвЂ™s yearly orbit around the Sun вЂ“В from their true movements through the Galaxy. For some of the brightest stars in the survey, the level of precision equates to Earth-bound observers being able to spot a Euro coin lying on the surface of the Moon. The new data release, which covers the period between 25 July 2014 and, pins down the positions of nearly 1.7 billion stars, and with a much greater precision. The first data release, based on just over one year of observations, was published in 2016 it contained distances and motions of two million stars. Gaia was launched in December 2013 and started science operations the following year. It demonstrates the need for long-term projects to guarantee progress in space science and technology and to implement even more daring scientific missions of the coming decades.вЂќ вЂњGaia is an ambitious mission that relies on a huge human collaboration to make sense of a large volume of highly complex data.