The motions of 96 million stars
Date: 25 April 2018
Copyright: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
An all-sky view of the stars as viewed by ESA's Gaia satellite using information from the mission's second data release. This view shows both brightness and colour information of 96 million stars, selected from the Gaia catalogue by choosing the ones with the most accurate distance determinations. After a few seconds, the stars start to move according to their true velocity across the sky, or proper motions, measured by Gaia. This shows the way the stars will move across the sky during the next 800 000 years.
Acknowledgement: Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC); Image: A. Moitinho / A. F. Silva / M. Barros / C. Barata, University of Lisbon, Portugal; H. Savietto, Fork Research, Portugal; Animation: Gaia Sky; S. Jordan / T. Sagristà, Astronomisches Rechen-Institut, Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg, Germany
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO License. 