From the stars of the old stars to the white dwarfs, the Gaia Space telescope saw everything.
On Thursday, the mission specialists in the European Space Agency, which is low on fuel, will send an orbit around the sun, and it will be stopped after more than a decade of service to astronomers in the world.
Gaya has planned the universe since 2014, as it established a wide encyclopedia for the sites and movements of heavenly things on our way to the Milky Way and beyond. It is difficult to capture the scope of development and discovery that the spinning observatory has enabled. But here are some numbers: nearly two billion stars, millions of potential galaxies and about 150,000 asteroids. These notes led to More than 13,000 studiesSo far, by astronomers.
Gaya turned the way scientists understand the universe, and his data has become a reference point for many other telescopes on Earth and in space. Less than a third of the data she collected so far has been issued to scientists.
“It’s something that now supports almost all astronomy,” said Anthony Brown, an astronomer at the University of Liden in the Netherlands, who leads the GAIA data processing and analysis group. “I think that if you are going to ask my colleagues in astronomy, they can no longer imagine the conduct of research without the presence of Gaya there.”
The primary goal of Gaia was in 2013, to reveal the history and structure of the Milky Way by building the most accurate and 3D map for billion stars sites and speeds. With only a small part of that data, astronomers estimated The aura of the dark matter Our galaxy is immersed and selected Thousands of stars on the property of infringementIt was taken from another galaxy 10 billion years ago.
Dr. Brown explained that the measurement of continuous vibrations in the milky road disk – a type of Hungarian earthquake certificate From a meeting with the satellite galaxy that is going on around us more recently than scientists believed. This may be the reason for the Milky Way It looks deformed When it is seen from the side.
Gaya’s arrival extended beyond what can be obtained around our address of the galaxy. The spacecraft helped monitor the satellites around other worlds in our solar system, and seized Starquakes and the excessive stars that were monitored in the Milky Way. Inside the stars catalog, astronomers found hints from new planets and black holes, including the closest known to the Earth. Universe scientists have used Gaia’s vibrant stars to help measuring the rate of expansion of our world.
“Gaaya was and will be incredibly important to our understanding of the universe,” said Lisa Kalinggar, an astronomer at Cornell University, who was used in 2021, in 2021, in 2021. Any strange worlds may be able to see us.
The task began to record data about six months after its launch. For more than 10 years, it slowly spins in space one million miles from Earth, as gravity balances our planet and the sun balance with the satellite movement.
The dual telescopes, which indicated in different directions on the spacecraft, wiped the sky, to capture the visual light that was wandering in its field. Three tools are on board parking, speeds, colors of stars and other heavenly things accurately. From these data, scientists have concluded information about temperature, mass and chemical formation.
“He does, to some extent, it seems like a boring work,” said Joshua Wayne, the scientist of astronomical physics at Princeton University. But “it’s really one of the most important astronomical projects in the past few decades.”
Dr. Wayne recently Discover a new outdoor planet In Gaya’s catalog by determining a small fluctuation in the star movement around him. It is one of the few planets that can be found using a method called Astrometry, which helps to discover huge worlds that revolve away from their host stars.
Dr. Wayne said: “Gaya is the first resource that we have and which must find a full range of planets, undoubtedly, through this technique.” “It is the beginning of what I think will be the next big stage in the discovery of external planets.”
Gaya closed her eyes in the light of the stars on January 15. Since then, the mission specialists have done the final technical tests of the spacecraft tools that can help operate future telescopes. It has changed its direction for the sun during these tests, making the spacecraft bright enough for Amateur astronomers to discover In the sky of the night, the final top scorer for the aging spacecraft.
“It is a sweet moment and passed when the task stops taking data,” said Johannes Sahlman, a physicist in the European Space Agency and the Gaya project. “But the same task is not over.”
Despite the duration of its mission, a large part of what GAIA has noticed is available to astronomers because more time is needed to process the huge amount of data it collected. The following data version of the 2026 spacecraft has been set, and it will have five and a half years of data. The final version, which contains the entire data set, is scheduled to be earlier in 2030.
A number of the most recent spacecraft extension of the GAIA scientific legacy using the stars catalog in the task to calibrate their observations. These include the NASA space James Web and the Euclide ‘mission of the European Agency. The next American Vera C Robin Observatory and the large telescope in Europe, both in Chile, will benefit from what Gaia saw.
European scientists are already planning a background spacecraft that will continue in the Gaia Galaxy flame, the next time that infrared gathering, instead of visual. Such a telescope will not be released early in the 1940s and will help astronomers through the dust that breaks the Milky Way.
Meanwhile, Gaya will spend the rest of her days to rotate our local star, a suitable cemetery due to its exploration of distant things through the Milky Way. For scientists in the mission, there will be no weekly meetings with the aviation monitoring team, and there are no new data.
“It is a strange feeling. It is good to see things end. Of course, we still have many years of work,” said Dr. Brown, who participated in designing the mission in 1997.