This is not the title of a fantasy story (even though it could well be). No, I am talking about GAIA, ESA’s space observatory launched in 2013 and still in full activity. Just over one year ago, GAIA released its second batch of data on more than one billion stars. Since then, astronomers have been busy exploring this catalogue and retrieving re a huge amount of new information about the cosmos.
One type of objects that has seen a startling abundance of new detections is white dwarfs. Another important finding regards the upcoming collision of our galaxy with its neighbour Andromeda.
“Astronomers have long suspected that Andromeda will one day collide with the Milky Way, completely reshaping our cosmic neighbourhood. However, the three-dimensional movements of the Local Group galaxies remained unclear, painting an uncertain picture of the Milky Way’s future. ‘We needed to explore the galaxies’ motions in 3D to uncover how they have grown and evolved, and what creates and influences their features and behaviour,’ says lead author Roeland van der Marel of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, USA. ‘We were able to do this using the second package of high-quality data released by Gaia‘ (ESA blog post, 2018).
While we wait for the full 3D mapping of the Milky Way to come out, we can enjoy GAIA’s archive and download all the mission data. Have fun!
Andromeda and Milky Way are going to collide!? I’m assuming this won’t happen in the near future. What a scary thought, though, even if it’s scientifically fascinating and fun to wonder about the consequences.
Interesting, isn’t it? But nothing we should be too concerned about, though. It should occur at some moment in about 4.5 billion years from now…! At that moment, however, our Sun will be turning into a red giant, so, I do hope humankind, if still around, would’ve moved already to other more life-friendly destinations. 🙂
So we still have some time to find a new home… 😉
But the travel is going to be bumpy 😉