Gaia Probe Reveals Stellar DNA and Unexpected 'Starquakes' - Slashdot

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source link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/22/06/13/2317203/gaia-probe-reveals-stellar-dna-and-unexpected-starquakes
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Gaia Probe Reveals Stellar DNA and Unexpected 'Starquakes'

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Astronomers have unveiled the most detailed survey of the Milky Way, revealing thousands of "starquakes" and stellar DNA, and helping to identify the most habitable corners of our home galaxy. From a report: The observations from the European Space Agency's Gaia probe cover almost two billion stars -- about 1% of the total number in the galaxy -- and are allowing astronomers to reconstruct our home galaxy's structure and find out how it has evolved over billions of years. Previous surveys by Gaia, a robotic spacecraft launched in 2013, have pinpointed the motion of the stars in our home galaxy in exquisite detail. By rewinding these movements astronomers can model how our galaxy has morphed over time. The latest observations add details of chemical compositions, stellar temperatures, colours, masses and ages based on spectroscopy, where starlight is split into different wavelengths.

These measurements unexpectedly revealed thousands of starquakes, cataclysmic tsunami-like events on the surface of stars. "Starquakes teach us a lot about stars -- notably, their internal workings," said Conny Aerts of KU Leuven in Belgium, who is a member of the Gaia collaboration. "Gaia is opening a goldmine for asteroseismology of massive stars." Dr George Seabroke, senior research associate at Mullard space science laboratory at University College London, said: "If you can see these stars changing in brightness halfway across the Milky Way, if you were anywhere near them, it would be like the sun changing shape in front of your eyes." Gaia is fitted with a 1bn pixel camera -- the largest ever in space -- complete with more than 100 electronic detectors. The latest dataset represents the largest chemical map of the galaxy to date, cataloguing the composition of six million stars, ten times the number measured in previous ground-based catalogues.

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