New trove of Gaia data will uncloak the Milky Way's dark past and future

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New data from Europe's Gaia mission will enable astronomers to reconstruct how the Milky Way assembled by devouring groups of stars arriving from intergalactic space.

New trove of Gaia data will uncloak the Milky Way's dark past and future : Read more

 

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"You really get to know the stars," Jos de Bruijne, Gaia project scientist at ESA, told Space.com. "It's like you have an anonymous group of people and now you get to meet every one of them. You get to know their names and how old they are and where they came from."

The group of stars that astronomers "get to meet" thanks to the June 13 data release consists of half a billion individual objects, one-quarter of the stars Gaia observes. This information will help astronomers refine the order of events that shaped the Milky Way and "really untangle its formation history,"

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