The European Space Agency announced that its Gaia mission would reveal new data on Monday, June 13. The upcoming data release will contain information about two billion of the brightest objects in space and galaxies outside the Milky Way.
Where to Watch Gaia Mission's Livestream
According to Space.com, the European Space Agency will hold a media briefing on June 13 at 4:00 A.M Eastern Standard Time, and it will be broadcast on ESA Web TV.
The release will supercharge the mapping of the Milky Way galaxy, allowing astronomers to see the most distinguished and finest details of the farthest fringes of the universe.
Launched in 2013, the European Space Agency developed the Gaia mission to help them create the most accurate 3D map of the galaxy.
Since then, Gaia has had several releases, leading to leaps in the understanding of the Milky Way.
Because of this mission, astronomers learned about the exact positions of thousands of stars, their exact distances from Earth, and the total speed at which they travel.
The upcoming release is Gaia's third data dump, the other two being in 2016 and 2018, respectively.
According to Universe Today, the new data will include information that has not been released before, such as the ages, chemical compositions, and masses of stars.
Aside from that, Gaia also studied the Andromeda Galaxy, the largest galactic neighbor of the Milky Way. It also conducted a sky survey of the bright objects at the center of some galaxies.
Looking for the Milky Way's Spiral Structure
Although the Gaia mission has mapped around two billion stars, that is just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, according to the European Space Agency, it is only 1% of the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
One of the things that astronomers want to learn more about is the Milky Way's spiral structure. The astronomers agree that it has four spiral arms, but they wish to study the points of contention around those arms.
Astronomers still debate about the size and prominence of each arm, as well as their position in the Milky Way's disk. The upcoming data release may help reveal the spiral structure.
Other Milky Way Questions That Gaia's Data May Answer
Aside from the spiral structure of the Milky Way, the Gaia is set to study where the stars come from. Using astrophysical parameters derived from the light spectra of the stars, the chemical composition, age, mass, temperature and brightness of each start will be revealed.
Gaia is also expected to use radio astronomy as an observation technique to answer the question about the distribution of dark matter in the galaxy.
Also, using galactic archaeology, astronomers can use Gaia's measurements to help them reconstruct the trajectories of millions of stars, and they can learn about events that happened billions of years ago.
These events involve cataclysmic collisions with other galaxies, the effects of which can be observed in the galaxy to this day. One example is the collision of Gaia Enceladus, which happened 11 billion years ago.
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Written by Sophie Webster
