Astronomers Release Data
Earth moves in many ways: it rotates around its axis, it revolves around the sun, and now astronomers have found another way in which it moves. Along with our solar system, our Earth moves around the galaxy. In 2013, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the GAIA (Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics) spacecraft which is now located 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth. Astronomers released data that GAIA collected over the years, which shows how stars, including our Sun, move through the Milky Way over time.
This new data shows very precise measurements of the 300,000 stars that are within 326 light-years of our solar system, and even shows information about some of the stars in the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, which are the two closest galaxies to the Milky Way.
Image from Twitter handle @esascience