[phas-dept] FW: [Faculty-talk] [Announce] Gaia

[Carlos Bertulani]

This message might be of interest for our astronomers.
carlos

From: <faculty-talk-bounces at physics.tamu.edu> on behalf of nsuntzeff <nsuntzeff at tamu.edu>
Date: Wednesday, April 25, 2018 at 11:53 AM
To: announce <announce at physics.tamu.edu>
Subject: [Faculty-talk] [Announce] Gaia

Dear All,

Today, a few hours ago, the Gaia project dumped to internet the access to their 1.7 billion catalog of star positions, proper motions, and parallaxes. This data base will revolutionize - and I am not being hyperbolic in saying that - astronomy for the near future. This database will give us a great increase in precision for stellar distances, and Galactic kinematics. There were groups around the world sitting at their computers waiting for the minute and second to start the downloads. At NYU 60 astronomers, physicists, and statisticians went to work on their projects.

Here is a first image of the results from Gaia. This is not a photo of the Galaxy, it is a positional plot of the brightness and colors of all 1.7 billion stars.

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__tinyurl.com_y7xuags8&d=DwIGaQ&c=oqyuZuih6ykib6aKiBq22_bich4AVfYGoLertJN0bEc&r=hjwEO_XYlnwAQWUGeaCrW47w4mK-Al28-BKyRvaivBs&m=BFZsXKA7KVqV30u-NFTQbjUoRbVkLbntSy2DQ24fNrQ&s=BVNF90bIa3iEEPGPe-fRZsXO4BScw735DIzkjfBZIcQ&e=

The astronomy community being what it is, you can expect breathless press releases over the next few days of scientific results from groups wanting to be first.

Gaia gives a 3D map of the stars in the Galaxy. Here is a 3D representation of the stars at their proper distances, and velocities.

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.youtube.com_watch-3Ftime-5Fcontinue-3D83-26v-3DKyQdK56Qee0&d=DwIGaQ&c=oqyuZuih6ykib6aKiBq22_bich4AVfYGoLertJN0bEc&r=hjwEO_XYlnwAQWUGeaCrW47w4mK-Al28-BKyRvaivBs&m=BFZsXKA7KVqV30u-NFTQbjUoRbVkLbntSy2DQ24fNrQ&s=3IETcYh0E0UDPj0pFne4F8_-a3rHZ963YRYkX_5ditE&e=

(note: the parallaxes and proper motions have been exaggerated by a factor of 100,000x. The circular motion you see is the reflex position of the star as the earth orbits the sun.)

Here is a color - magnitude diagram for all the nearby stars. The main sequence and the white dwarf sequence are obvious.

[cid:image001.jpg at 01D3DCC3.EE191130]


Here is an image of the radial velocities of all the stars.

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And here you can visualize the velocities of the spiral arms to our Galaxy.

PastedGraphic-3.tiff<cid:A93CBFE2-D992-460D-B96F-AF43910FA10D>


and lots more…

cheers nick


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