PARIS: Europe’s Gaia satellite has produced a “stunning” 3-D map, published Wednesday, of more than a billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, complete with their distance from Earth, their color, and their motion through space.
The eagerly-anticipated catalogue was compiled from data gathered by Gaia on some 1.7 billion stars over 22 months in 2014-2016, from its unique vantage point in space about 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) from Earth.
“The dataset is very rich and we believe it will revolutionize astronomy and our understanding of the Milky Way,” Gaia’s scientific operations manager Uwe Lammers told AFP of the massive data release.
“This catalogue is the most precise, most complete catalogue that has ever been produced. It allows studies which have not been possible before.”
Launched in 2013, Gaia gathers data on about 100,000 stars per minute — some 500 million measurements per day. Its first map was published in September 2016, with about 1.15 billion stars.
An update, released at the ILA international air and space show in Berlin, adds stars and provides more data on each one. Some were measured as many as 70 times.
The map contains 1.7 billion stars “for which we can tell where they are in the sky with very high accuracy, and how bright they are,” said Anthony Brown of the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium.
For 1.3 billion of those, “we know their distance and we know how they move through space.”
There is, furthermore, information on the radial velocities of some seven million stars — indicating the rate at which they are moving toward, or away from, Earth.
With all this data, “we can make a map of the whole night sky,” said Brown, who described the end result as “stunning.”
“You see the whole Milky Way in motion around its axis.”
Gaia also revealed the orbits of some 14,000 “solar system objects” — mapped as an intricate spiderweb of space rocks orbiting the Sun.
“It represents the most accurate survey ever of asteroids in the Solar System,” said Brown. More will be added in future updates.
Information sent to Earth by Gaia is collated by 450 scientists from 20 countries.
One of them, Antonella Vallenari, likened the data release to “opening a chocolate box.”
“It’s very, very exciting,” she said at the launch event in Germany, webcast live.
The full data will be published in a series of scientific papers in a special issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
New 3-D map of Milky Way will ‘revolutionize astronomy’
New 3-D map of Milky Way will ‘revolutionize astronomy’
Apple to update EU browser options, make more apps deletable
- iPhone maker came under pressure from regulators to make changes after the EU’s sweeping Digital Markets Act took effect on March 7
- Apple users will be able to select a default browser directly from the choice screen after going through a mandatory list of options
STOCKHOLM: Apple will change how users choose browser options in the European Union, add a dedicated section for changing default apps, and make more apps deletable, the company said on Thursday.
The iPhone maker came under pressure from regulators to make changes after the EU’s sweeping Digital Markets Act took effect on March 7, forcing big tech companies to offer mobile users the ability to select from a list of available web browsers on a “choice screen.”
The new rules require mobile software makers to show the choice screen where users can select a browser, search engine and virtual assistant as they set up their phones, which earlier came with preferred options from Apple and Google.
In an update later this year, Apple users will be able to select a default browser directly from the choice screen after going through a mandatory list of options.
A randomly ordered list of 12 browsers per EU country will be shown to the user with short descriptions, and the chosen one will be automatically downloaded, Apple said. The choice screen will also be available on iPads through an update later this year.
Apple released a previous update in response to the new rules in March, but browser companies criticized the design of its choice screen, and the Commission opened an investigation on March 25 saying it suspected that the measures fell short of effective compliance.
The company said it has been in dialogue with the European Commission and believes the new changes will address regulators’ concerns.
It also plans to introduce a dedicated area for default apps where a user will be able to set defaults for messaging, phone calls, spam filters, password managers and keyboards.
Users will also be able to delete certain Apple-made apps such as App Store, Messages, Camera, Photos and Safari. Only Settings and Phone apps would not be deletable.
