ESA Science & Technology - Gaia's all-sky map of radial velocities

All-sky view of radial velocities of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy, based on data from the second release of ESA's Gaia satellite. The radial velocity is the component of a star's true velocity through space measured along the line of sight.

The image shows the rotation pattern of stars in the Galaxy: stars shown in blue are moving towards the Sun, while stars shown in red are moving away. This information can be inferred from the red- or blue- shift of the light in the spectrum of a star as measured by Gaia's radial velocity spectrometer.

Acknowledgement: Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC); Gaia Coordination Unit 6; A. Brown, University of Leiden, The Netherlands; D. Katz, Observatory of Paris, France

 
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