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The new card: The latest data shows the location and motions of just under 2 billion stars, with highly accurate measurements of around 300,000 stars within 326 light years of the solar system. The new map shows us that our solar system’s orbit around the Milky Way is accelerating toward the center of the galaxy at seven millimeters per second.
What could we learn? The purpose of the mission is not simply to get a glimpse of the moving stars of the galaxy. The data could help astronomers answer a number of different scientific questions, including how the Milky Way was formed over time, where the solar system and other star systems are heading, what the expansion of the universe and the distribution of regular and dark frequencies. matter throughout the galaxy. Previous Gaia datasets were used to verify the mass of the Milky Way and how much Sun-like stars could be orbited by bright planets on Earth.
And after: Gaia will be operational until around 2022, but it is holding up better than expected and could see its mission extend into 2024 or beyond. The final publication of the data is expected to catalog more than 2 billion objects in the galaxy.
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