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Best map of Milky Way reveals a billion stars in motion

Data haul from Gaia space observatory offers a glimpse of what Earth’s night sky will look like for 1.6 million years to come.
  1. Davide Castelvecchi
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Gaia's stellar motion for the next 400 thousand years.

Trails showing how 40,000 stars in the Galaxy will move across the sky in the next 400,000 years. Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

The best available map of the Milky Way just got better. The latest update from the Gaia space observatory — which is tracking more than 1 billion stars in the Galaxy — provides not just a static image, but a moving picture of how stars will shift over time. The data will underpin studies that range from the origins and evolution of the Galaxy to locating its dark matter.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03432-9

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