The blog is back. Sorry, I should have warned you that I may stop updating it when I'm going through a big grading frenzy for the class I TA. Ooops!
The European Space Agency launched its Gaia satellite a few days ago, and its goal is to create the most accurate 3-D map of the Milky Way. It's really hard to put it in perspective, but "Gaia will study the position, distance, movement, chemical composition and brightness of a billion stars in the galaxy, or roughly 1 percent of the Milky
Way's 100 billion stars." It can measure to about the diameter of a human hair from 600 miles up! It also has dozens of cameras that can take 1,000 megapixel photos when combined and may test part of Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
We still have 4.5 months to wait until it is operating, but I expect we will hear about some cool findings after then if all goes well!
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/european-satellite-map-billion-stars-21273109
The European Space Agency launched its Gaia satellite a few days ago, and its goal is to create the most accurate 3-D map of the Milky Way. It's really hard to put it in perspective, but "Gaia will study the position, distance, movement, chemical composition and brightness of a billion stars in the galaxy, or roughly 1 percent of the Milky
Way's 100 billion stars." It can measure to about the diameter of a human hair from 600 miles up! It also has dozens of cameras that can take 1,000 megapixel photos when combined and may test part of Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
We still have 4.5 months to wait until it is operating, but I expect we will hear about some cool findings after then if all goes well!
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/european-satellite-map-billion-stars-21273109