ESA Releases New Detailed 3D Map of Milky Way Galaxy

Data gathered from the ESA’s Gaia observatory should provide clues as to how the solar system formed and the rate at which the universe is expanding. Photograph: ESA/Gaia/DPAC

Astronomers have just revealed the most detailed map of our galaxy ever recorded!

Scientists from the ESA used data from the Gaia space observatory, which is a big telescope floating in space, that has been scanning our skies since 2014.

This information was then used to help the astronomers build a 3D map of our galaxy.

The map has revealed how stars move in our galaxy, and might even reveal secrets about how our solar system was formed!

Known as the ‘Galaxy Surveyor’, the Gaia observatory floats 930,000 miles above the Earth in the opposite direction to the sun, this area is called the ‘Lagrange point’.

For the past seven years, the telescope has measured the positions and movements of nearly two billion stars!

By monitoring quasars, which are super bright objects, powered by giant black holes, that are very far away, researchers could see that our solar system is moving towards the centre of the Milky Way, at a very slow rate of around seven millimetres a second each year.

Astronomers hope this new map will help us to learn lots more secrets and information about our galaxy.

SOURCE: BBC