The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia mission has revolutionized our understanding of the Milky Way galaxy, providing unprecedented insights into star clusters and their behavior. Over the past decade, Gaia has mapped the locations, motions, and brightnesses of billions of stars with unprecedented precision, allowing scientists to understand these stars like never before.
Gaia’s data has revealed that star clusters are more connected than expected over vast distances, and have helped redefine our understanding of how they form and evolve. The mission has identified new open clusters ranging from a few pairs of co-moving stars to thousands strong, and has created the largest and most precise multi-dimensional map of the Milky Way ever.
One of Gaia’s key findings is that small aggregates of young stars, known as OB associations, are indeed born together and move in the same way, rather than being old, expanded clusters. This discovery has significant implications for our understanding of star formation and the history of the Milky Way.
Gaia has also mapped the structure of dark molecular clouds, numerous young clusters, stellar streams, and nascent stars emerging from their birth clouds. The telescope has revealed that many young clusters are part of larger cluster ‘chains’ or ‘families’, sharing common origins and star formation histories.
Furthermore, Gaia’s high-precision astrometry has allowed scientists to spot extended tidal tails around open clusters, tracing the kinematics of these features and finding them to be asymmetric in density and length. The mission has also pinpointed stars that have escaped their birthplace, shedding light on the dynamics of cluster formation and dissolution.
As Gaia’s data continues to be released, astronomers will benefit from its high-volume, large-scale insights into our skies. The ESA’s upcoming sky surveys, including 4MOST and WEAVE, and missions like Plato, will complement Gaia’s findings by revealing more about the stars in our skies.
Gaia’s mission has brought about a stellar revolution, delivering new and updated science at pace and supplying astronomers with the data they need to dig deeper into our understanding of the Milky Way. With most of its data yet to be released, scientists are already using Gaia’s treasure trove of observations to explore billions of stars and objects in our galaxy and beyond.
In conclusion, the Gaia mission has fundamentally reframed our understanding of how gas and stars populate the skies we see, and how star formation is driven throughout the Milky Way. As more data are released, astronomers will uncover new insights into the nature of star clusters and their role in shaping the galaxy’s history.
Source: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Gaia/Gaia_proves_our_skies_are_filled_with_chains_of_starry_gatherings