Gaia Reconstructs a Side View of our Galaxy

Explanation: What does our Milky Way Galaxy look like from the side? Because we are on the inside, humanity can't get an actual picture. Recently, however, just such a map has been made using location data for over a billion stars from ESA's Gaia mission. The resulting featured illustration shows that just like many other spiral galaxies , our Milky Way has a very thin central disk. Our Sun and all the stars we see at night are in this disk. Although hypothesized before , perhaps more surprising is that the disk appears curved at the outer edges. The colors of our Galaxy's warped central band derive mostly from dark dust , bright blue stars , and red emission nebulas . Although data analysis is ongoing, Gaia was deactivated in March after a successful mission.

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