CS Mapper

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Mapping data
  • Mapping framework
  • Google maps
  • Geo data
  • IT project funding

CS Mapper

Header Banner

CS Mapper

  • Home
  • Mapping data
  • Mapping framework
  • Google maps
  • Geo data
  • IT project funding
Mapping data
Home›Mapping data›Megamap of the Milky Way and UK science unrest

Megamap of the Milky Way and UK science unrest

By Lewis Dunn
June 22, 2022
0
0

The Milky Way in four maps: data from the Gaia spacecraft shows the speed at which stars are approaching or moving away from us, called the radial velocity (top left); their radial velocity and proper motion, or how they move across the sky (bottom left); their chemical composition (bottom right); and interstellar dust (top right).Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC/CU6 (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

Milky Way mega-map adds depth to star movements

Astronomers’ primary reference guide to the Milky Way has received a major update. The Gaia mission, in which a spacecraft tracks nearly two billion stars, has released a vastly improved map. The map now includes the 3D motions of tens of millions of stars and thousands of asteroids, as well as detections of star “quakes” and possible extrasolar planets.

The mission team unveiled the treasure, which consists of 34 months of data, on June 13.

Gaia was launched by the European Space Agency in 2013 and orbits the Sun at a fixed distance from Earth. It takes repeated measurements of the same stars from different perspectives. This causes each star’s apparent position to change by a small angle – usually millionths of a degree – proportional to its distance. The mission team uses these changes and a technique called parallax to calculate the star’s distance from the Sun.

The biggest addition to the previous catalog is the set of detailed spectra for about a million stars. By measuring the Doppler shift of a spectrum, the team calculated 30 million “radial velocity” measurements. Each indicates the speed at which a star is approaching or moving away from the Sun. Together with Gaia’s measurements of the star’s motion across the sky and its distance, the data provides a full reconstruction of the star’s path as it orbits the Galaxy.

George Freeman MP, Minister for Science, Research and Innovation walking along Downing Street, November 2021.

UK Science Minister George Freeman said negotiations over UK participation in Horizon Europe were at a “critical point”.Credit: Alamy

Fears are growing that Britain will quit EU research fund

Concerns are growing that the UK is set to quit the European Union’s Horizon Europe research program after UK science minister George Freeman (pictured) said on June 8 that ‘time is running out ” for a positive resolution.

With a budget of nearly 100 billion euros ($106 billion), Horizon Europe provides research funds to scientists from EU member states and other nations who choose to become “associate members”. But the UK’s participation in the program has been in question since the country voted to leave the EU in 2016. In December 2020, the EU and the UK reached an agreement under the of the global Brexit agreement to continue the Horizon Europe collaboration. But issues over the deal’s ‘Northern Ireland Protocol’ have stalled its ratification.

The UK’s participation in Horizon is “used as a bargaining chip in a much wider and broader political negotiation”, says Kieron Flanagan, a science and policy researcher at the University of Manchester, UK.

The UK government has said that if a deal cannot be struck it will develop its own £15 billion (US$18.7 billion) research program to compete with Horizon Europe.

Related posts:

  1. Hot spots of the Indian variant of Covid-19 in the UK
  2. Montana COVID-19 Report (Friday, May 28)
  3. Study finds worrying blood lead levels in children in Berks County, especially in Reading | Environment
  4. Massive success paves the way for entry into the automotive sector

Categories

  • Geo data
  • Google maps
  • IT project funding
  • Mapping data
  • Mapping framework

Recent Posts

  • The risk of extinction could be much worse than current estimates
  • How to Use Driving View in Google Assistant
  • Guidance to support public sector investment in location data
  • Plan a trip? Here are the best navigation apps for iPhone in 2022
  • One Data Indonesia to consolidate geospatial information – OpenGov Asia

Archives

  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • August 2019
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms and Conditions