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Data trove helps pin down the shape of the Milky Way

Clery, Daniel

On 25 April, hundreds of astronomers around the world got their hands on one of the biggest data dumps in the history of astronomy: the exact positions, motions, brightnesses, and colors of 1.3 billion stars in and around the Milky Way, gathered during the first 2 years of operation by the European Space Agency's €750 million Gaia satellite, launc…

Fast stars point to supernovae, black holes

Sokol, Joshua

On 25 April, the European Space Agency released a data set gathered by the Gaia satellite containing the motions, and much more, of 1.3 billion stars. Astronomers have immediately sifted the data for fast-moving stars. They are prized as forensic tools: When rewound, their trajectories point back to the violent events that launched them. Last week…