This is a new artist’s impression of our galaxy, the Milky Way, based on data from ESA’s Gaia space telescope.

Last starlight for ground-breaking Gaia

15 January 2025

The European Space Agency’s Milky Way-mapper Gaia has completed the sky-scanning phase of its mission, racking up more than three trillion observations of about two billion stars and other objects over the last decade to revolutionise the view of our home galaxy and cosmic neighbourhood.

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Largest chemical map of the Milky Way unveiled

13 June 2022

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia mission has released a new treasure trove of data about our home galaxy, including stellar DNA, asymmetric motions, strange ‘starquakes’, and other fascinating insights.

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Pale white veils and the narrow bridge between the clouds represent the distribution of the RR Lyrae stars

A bridge of stars connects two dwarf galaxies

08 February 2017

The Magellanic Clouds, the two largest satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, appear to be connected by a bridge stretching across 43,000 light years, according to an international team of astronomers led by researchers from the University of Cambridge. The discovery is reported in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS) and is based on the Galactic stellar census being conducted by the European Space Observatory, Gaia.

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