Gaia’s Milky Way discoveries

ESA’s Gaia mission is surveying more than a billion stars in our cosmic neighbourhood to chart the history and evolution of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. This video highlights some of the mission’s discoveries based on the first 22 months of scanning the sky. Images/videos: - Koppelman, Villalobos & Helmi, Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen, The Netherlands - ESA - European Space Agency - ESA/Gaia/DPAC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO - Stefan Payne-Wardenaar - ESA/Hubble, NASA, L. Calçada; CC BY 4.0 - ESA (artist’s impression and composition); Marchetti et al 2018 (star positions and trajectories); NASA/ESA/Hubble (background galaxies), CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO- ESA/Gaia/DPAC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO