Gaia is ESA’s mission to create the most accurate and complete multidimensional map of the Galaxy. This allows astronomers to reconstruct the structure of our home galaxy and previous evolution over billions of years and better understand the life cycle of stars and our place in the universe.
Gaia data version 3 contains new and improved details about the nearly two billion stars in our galaxy. The list includes new information, including chemical compositions, stellar temperatures, colors, masses, ages, and the speed at which stars move toward or away from us (radial velocity). Much of this information has been revealed by recently published spectroscopy data, a technique in which starlight is split into its constituent colors (like a rainbow). The data also include specific subset of stars, such as those that change brightness over time.
Also new to this dataset is the largest list of binary stars, thousands of objects in the solar system such as asteroids and planetary moons, and millions of galaxies and quasars outside our galaxy.
Starquakes
One of the most astonishing discoveries of the new data is that Gaia is able to detect stellar earthquakes — tiny movements on the surface of a star — that change the shape of the stars, something the observatory was not originally built for.
Previously, Gaia had already found radial oscillations that cause stars to swell and shrink periodically, while maintaining their spherical shape. But Gaia has now identified other vibrations that are more like a large-scale tsunami. These non-radial oscillations change the global shape of a star and are therefore more difficult to detect.
Gaia found strong non-radial stellar earthquakes in thousands of stars. Gaia also revealed such vibrations in stars that have rarely been seen in the past. These stars should not have any earthquakes according to current theory, while Gaia detected them on their surface.
“Starfish teach us a lot about stars, especially their inner workings. Gaia opens a goldmine for mass star astrology,” said Conny Aerts of KU Leuven in Belgium, who is a member of Gaia.
The DNA of the stars
What the stars are made of can tell us about their birthplace and subsequent journey, and therefore the history of the Galaxy. With today’s data release, Gaia reveals the largest chemical map of the galaxy combined with 3D motion, from our solar neighborhood to the smaller galaxies surrounding ours.
Some stars contain more “heavy metals” than others. During the Big Bang, only light elements (hydrogen and helium) formed. All other heavier elements – called metals by astronomers – are built into the stars. When the stars die, they release these metals into the gas and dust between the stars called interstellar medium, from which new stars are formed. Active star formation and death will lead to an environment richer in minerals. Therefore, the chemical composition of a star is a bit like its DNA, giving us critical information about its origin.
With Gaia, we see that some stars in our galaxy are made of primordial material, while others like our sun are made of matter enriched by previous generations of stars. The stars closest to the center and level of our galaxy are richer in minerals than the stars at greater distances. Gaia also recognized stars that originally came from different galaxies than ours, based on their chemical composition.
“Our galaxy is a beautiful melting pot of stars,” says Alejandra Recio-Blanco of the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in France, which is part of the Gaia partnership.
“This diversity is extremely important because it tells us the story of the formation of our galaxy. It reveals the processes of migration within our galaxy and the accumulation of outer galaxies. It also clearly shows that our sun and we all belong to an ever-changing system. , formed thanks to the assembly of stars and gases of different origins “.
Binary stars, asteroids, quasars and more
Other work published today reflects the breadth and depth of Gaia’s potential for discovery. A new list of binary stars shows the mass and evolution of more than 800,000 binary systems, while a new asteroid survey of 156,000 rocky bodies delves deeper into the origins of our solar system. Gaia also reveals information about 10 million variable stars, mysterious macromolecules between stars, as well as quasars and galaxies beyond our cosmic neighborhood.
“Unlike other missions that target specific objects, Gaia is a research mission. This means that while exploring the entire sky with billions of stars many times over, Gaia is sure to make discoveries that other more exclusive missions would miss. This is “One of its strengths, and we look forward to the astronomy community dive into our new data to learn even more about our galaxy and its environment than we could have imagined,” said Timo Prusti, Project Scientist for Gaia. at ESA.
Gaia is ESA’s mission to create the most accurate and complete multidimensional map of the Galaxy. This allows astronomers to reconstruct the structure of our home galaxy and previous evolution over billions of years and better understand the life cycle of stars and our place in the universe.
Video: Gaia, the Billionaire Star Inspector More info: Gaia in depth: www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/data-release-3
Gaia Images: www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Sea & a & result_type = images
Provided by the European Space Agency
Report: Gaia sees strange stars in the most detailed search of our Galaxy to date (2022, June 13) retrieved on June 13, 2022 by
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