Gaia
New All-Sky Map of the Milky Way’s Galactic Halo
The outer reaches of the Milky Way galaxy are a different place. Stars are much harder to come by, with…
Our Part of the Galaxy is Packed with Binary Stars
Binary star systems are everywhere. They make up a huge percentage of all known solar systems: from what we can…
The Solar System Might Not Exist if There Wasn’t a Huge Galactic Collision with the Milky Way Billions of Years Ago
The Milky Way has a number of satellite galaxies; nearly 60 of them, depedending on how we define them. One…
Tatooines everywhere? Many of the Exoplanets Already Discovered are in Multi-Star Systems
Right now, we know of about 4,000 confirmed exoplanets, mostly thanks to the Kepler mission. TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey…
This Star has been Kicked Out of the Milky Way. It Knows What It Did.
Every once in a while, the Milky Way ejects a star. The evicted star is typically ejected from the chaotic…
Thanks to Gaia, We Now Know Exactly When We’ll be Colliding with Andromeda
Astronomers have known for some time that the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxies will collide on some future date.…
Gaia Spots an Enormous Ghost Galaxy Right Next Door that’s Being Dismantled by the Milky Way
Astronomers combing through data from the ESA's Gaia spacecraft have discovered what they're calling a ghost galaxy. The galaxy, named…
The Milky Way is Still Rippling from a Galactic Collision Millions of Years Ago
Between 300 million and 900 million years ago, our Milky Way galaxy nearly collided with the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. Data…
How Fast is the Universe Expanding? Hubble and Gaia Team Up to Conduct the Most Accurate Measurements to Date
A new study used data from both Hubble and Gaia in order to obtain the most precise measurements of cosmic…
Do Stars Move? Tracking Their Movements Across the Sky
The stars look static in the sky, but are they moving? How fast, and how do we know? What events…