Gaia telescope sent to Earth the first picture Bashny.Net

Currently, all of Gaia tested and trained to work. And then begin a marathon for photographing 1 billion stars in the Milky way. Compared with the general "population" of our galaxy, which is a hundred times more, this figure does not seem so significant, but even that number of stars will make unprecedented in its precision three-dimensional map of the galaxy. The whole mission is designed for 5 years, after which the card will be presented to mankind and show a detailed "address" of the solar system in a huge star "metropolis».

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In the picture presented dwarf galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite of our own - or rather, part of the galaxy - the star cluster NGC 1818. In spite of the distance of 163,000 light-years away, the star cluster is shown in some detail. Moreover, this picture is actually only 1 percent of the total picture taken Gaia. This high accuracy is due to a huge matrix of a billion pixels, for which Gaia has called the most powerful camera of all that has ever been bred in space.



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