Gaia: The space telescope remapping our night sky
- Published
An artist's idea of what the Gaia telescope would look like.
The Gaia telescope is helping to make the most accurate map of our galaxy ever seen.
The map won't just be more accurate, and with greater detail, it'll also be in 3D too.
Launched by the European Space Agency in 2013 the Gaia telescope has been studying the stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way.
The camera on the telescope is so powerful it can photograph a human hair from a thousand miles away!
Researchers have been looking at the data it has found, which has pin-pointed the location and brightness of over a billion stars.
However, despite this being a huge number, it is still only around 1% of the actual stars in our galaxy.
Scientists have said that the Gaia telescope has sent back so much information, they need the public to help them look through it.
This picture from the ESA shows the positions of lots of stars in our galaxy.
The Gaia telescope has been building on the previous research of the Hipparcos satellite, which was sent into space in the 1980s.
It helped scientists to map around 100,000 stars.
The Gaia telescope's mission will carry on for the next few years, meaning that the map of our galaxy will keep getting bigger!
- Published19 December 2013
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