The latest star map from the Gaia spacecraft plots 1.7 billion stars
Measurements also include half a million quasars and 14,099 known solar system objects
Using the precise position and brightness of almost 1.7 billion stars, the Gaia spacecraft has created the most precise 3-D map of the Milky Way yet.
On April 25, the European Space Agency’s Gaia team released the spacecraft’s second batch of data, gathered from July 2014 to May 2016, used to create the map. The tally includes measurements of half a million quasars — the active black holes at the centers of distant galaxies — and 14,099 known solar system objects (mostly asteroids), observations of other nearby galaxies and the amount of dust in between Earth and 87 million stars (SN: 4/14/18, p. 27).