ONE NATION UNDER GOD: The European Space Agency

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<b><i>SURVEYING THE MILKY WAY. Artist's depiction of the Gaia telescope mapping the stars of the Milky Way. Image released 28 April 2004 by the ESA/ATG medialab; background: ESO/S. Brunier</i></b></div>
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PARIS, France – The European Space Agency will unveil on Wednesday, September 14, a 3-dimensional map of a billion stars in our galaxy that is 1,000 times more complete than anything existing today.</div>
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A space-based probe called <a href="http://www.rappler.com/science-nature/46273-europe-launches-billion-dollar-milky-way-telescope" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e76229; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.2s ease;" target="_blank">Gaia, launched in December 2013</a>, has been circling the Sun 1.5 million kilometers (nearly a million miles) beyond Earth's orbit and has been discreetly snapping pictures of the Milky Way.</div>
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The satellite's billion-pixel camera, the largest ever in space, is so powerful it would be able to gauge the diameter of a human hair at a distance of 1,000 kilometers, meaning nearby stars have been located with unprecedented accuracy.</div>
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Just over halfway through its 5-year mission, Gaia's two telescopes have located a billion stars.</div>
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That's still only one percent of the Milky Way's estimated stellar population, scattered over an area 100,000 light years in diameter.</div>
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But it is enough to keep professional stargazers busy for years to come, said Francois Mignard, an astronomer at France's National Centre for Scientific Research and a member of the Gaia Science Team.</div>
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"Over the centuries we have sought to catalogue the content of the skies," he told Agence France-Presse.</div>
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"But never have we achieved anything so complete or precise – it is a massive undertaking."</div>
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The first data dump "opens a new chapter in astronomy," he added, and is certain to generate hundreds of scientific studies.</div>
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Gaia maps the position of the Milky Way's stars in a couple of ways.</div>
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Not only does it pinpoint their location, the probe – by scanning each star about 70 times – can plot their movement as well.</div>
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This is what allows scientists to calculate the distance between Earth and each star, a crucial measure, explained Mignard.</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 18px; font-weight: 700; margin-top: 50px;">Thousands of new worlds</span></div>
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Both types of data will be available Wednesday for more than two million stars.</div>
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"That's 20 times more than what we had before," Mignard said. "And all in one fell swoop!"</div>
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By the end of 2017, Gaia will have done the same for a billion.</div>
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At the same time, it will collect vital data about each star's temperature, luminosity and chemical composition, vastly expanding current knowledge.</div>
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Tens of thousands of previously undetected objects will be discovered, including asteroids that may one day threaten Earth, planets circling nearby stars, and exploding supernovas.</div>
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"It seems like a good bet that the mission will reveal thousands of new worlds," Gregory Laughlin, an astronomer at Yale University, told the science journal Nature.</div>
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By identifying stars from smaller galaxies long ago swallowed up by our own, Gaia will also help scientists better understand the Milky Way's origin and evolution.</div>
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Astrophysicists, meanwhile, hope to learn more about the distribution of dark matter, the invisible substance thought to hold the observable universe together.</div>
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They also plan to test Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity by watching how light is deflected by the Sun and its planets.</div>
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"Gaia is going to revolutionize what we know about stars and the Galaxy," David Hogg, an astronomer at New York University working on the project told Nature.</div>
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The spacecraft is controlled from the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, using ground stations in Cebreros, Spain and New Norcia in Australia.</div>
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More than 50 companies across Europe were involved in building Gaia and its instruments.</div>
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Mission scientists are scheduled to brief journalists on some of the initial findings Wednesday afternoon.</div>
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SOURCE: <a href="http://www.rappler.com/science-nature/earth-space/146192-esa-gaia-probe-milky-way-map?utm_content=buffer1e593&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer" target="_blank">RAPPLER</a></div>

The European Space Agency READ: 3-D map of Milky Way to be unveiled.

Just over halfway through its 5-year mission, Gaia's two telescopes have located a billion stars – only one percent of the Milky Way...