ESA Gaia Science Community - Gaia

Science with 1 billion objects in three dimensions

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Gaia news & highlights

2024-06-25 Dynamical masses across the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram

25 June 2024Have you ever wondered why some stars appear bluer while others are redder? Or why some stars shine brightly while others remain faint? These seemingly straightforward yet fundamental questions have intrigued humanity for centuries. Approximately a hundred years ago, astronomers Herzsprung and Russell unveiled a profound discovery, establishing...

2024-06-20 ESA release: Scientists spot hidden companions of bright stars

20 June 2024Photographing faint objects close to bright stars is incredibly difficult. Yet, by combining data from ESA's Gaia space telescope with ESO’s GRAVITY instrument on the ground, scientists managed just that. They took the first pictures of so far unseen dim companions of eight luminous stars. The technique unlocks the tantalising possibility to...

2024-06-17 Gaia symposium at EAS "The (TWO) Billion Star Galaxy Census: from the Solar System to our Milky Way and beyond"

17 June 2024The European Astronomical Society (EAS) will be meeting from 1-5 July in Padova, Italy. On 1 and 2 July a symposium is organised to present and discuss their science highlights resulting from Gaia EDR3 and Gaia DR3: "The (TWO) Billion Star Galaxy Census: from the Solar System to our Milky Way and beyond". More information is available from the...

2024-06-10 Gaia: Milky Way’s last major collision was surprisingly recent

10 June 2024Our galaxy has collided with many others in its lifetime. ESA’s Gaia space telescope now reveals that the most recent of these crashes took place billions of years later than we thought. A story on this finding was published on esa.int/gaia:...

2024-05-28 Did Gaia find its first neutron star?

28 May 2024With the publication of Gaia’s non-single star catalogue, a massive follow-up started of potentially interesting cases. Scientists were especially eager to follow up on candidate dark companions like black holes and neutron stars. Kareem El-Badry and other scientists across the world scheduled high-resolution spectroscopic follow-up of...

2024-05-27 Update to Gaia DR3 known issue "NSS: False-positive astrometric binary solutions"

27 May 2024A few new cases of false-positive astrometric binary solutions were identified. These cases have been added now to the Gaia DR3 known issue "NSS: False-positive astrometric binary solutions": https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dr3-known-issues#FalsePositive

2024-05-24 ESA Science Newsletter

24 May 2024Interested in ESA's science missions? How they come to be? What big science questions they hope to answer? We are launching the ESA Science newsletter, serving the scientific community with programmatic and technical news. Info and subscribe: https://cosmos.esa.int/web/scinews

2024-05-24 Small tribute to Gaia in LEGO Milky Way set

24 May 2024A small tribute is given to ESA's 3D galaxy mapper Gaia in the new LEGO Milky Way set. A 4-piece mini Gaia spacecraft! Interested in a 15-piece Gaia lego model? A set of instructions is available from the Gaia educational resources: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/education-materials.