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Image: Gaia’s stellar motion for the next 400 thousand years ESA22358019

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Description: The stars are in constant motion. To the human eye this movement – known as proper motion – is imperceptible, but Gaia is measuring it with more and more precision. The trails on this image show how 40 000 stars, all located within 100 parsecs (326 light years) of the Solar System, will move across the sky in the next 400 thousand years. These proper motions are released as part of the Gaia Early Data Release 3 (Gaia EDR3). They are twice as precise as the proper motions released in the previous Gaia DR2. The increase in precision is because Gaia has now measured the stars more times and over a longer interval of time. This represents a major improvement in Gaia EDR3 with respect to Gaia DR2.Read more
Author: European Space Agency
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License: CC-BY-SA-3.0
License Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
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