The European Space Agency (ESA) unveils a 3D map of a billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy that is about 1,000 times more accurate than ones available now.
Gaia, a space probe launched in December 2013, is circling the sun about 1.5 million kilometers beyond Earth's orbit. The satellite is on a mission to capture images of the stars existing in the unexplored galaxy with its billion-pixel camera.
The high resolution camera is powerful enough to measure the diameter of a human hair from a distance of 1,000 kilometers.
The satellite has located a billion stars in about two and a half years' time and is set to explore much more in the second half of its five-year mission. However, the billion stars are just about 1 percent of the estimated stellar population of the Milky Way covering over 100,000 light years in diameter.
Gaia is using its super advanced technology not only to pinpoint the precise position but also to measure the brightness of 1,142 million stars. The probe is also capable of plotting the stars' movement that would help scientists calculate the distance between Earth and the stars.
Alvaro Giménez, ESA's Director of Science, said that Gaia is at the cutting edge of astrometry, mapping the stars in the galaxy at a precision one has never seen before.
"Today's release gives us a first impression of the extraordinary data that await us and that will revolutionize our understanding of how stars are distributed and move across our Galaxy," added Giménez.
Meanwhile, Francois Mignard, a member of Gaia team and an astronomer at France's National Centre for Scientific Research, said that researchers have been trying to list the content of the skies for centuries now but nothing as accurate as this one has been achieved by far.
Mignard, who called it a "massive undertaking," also noted that it has opened the doors for a new chapter in the field of astronomy.
By the end of Gaia's term on space in 2017, it will have accumulated data on chemical composition, luminosity and temperature of the billion stars it will have located so far.
Many unidentified objects, exploding supernovas, planets orbiting nearby stars and asteroids that could be potential threats toEarth would also be discovered by Gaia in near future.
Gregory Laughlin, an astronomer at Yale University, said that the Gaia mission could reveal "thousands of new worlds" that haven't been discovered to date.
