Mark McCaughrean on Nostr: Gaia’s essential mission has been to measure the positions, distances, & motions of ...

Gaia’s essential mission has been to measure the positions, distances, & motions of more than a billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 1% of the total population.

Its resulting data catalogues, some of which are yet to come, provide a fundamental 6-dimensional map of our cosmic back garden, but also underpin the distance ladder that extends to the most distant reaches of the observable Universe.

https://sci.esa.int/web/gaia/-/47354-fact-sheet