Gaia has changed our impression of the Milky Way. Even seemingly simple ideas about the nature of our galaxy’s central bar and the spiral arms have been overturned. Gaia has shown us that it has more than two spiral arms and that they are less prominent than we previously thought. In addition, Gaia has shown that its central bar is more inclined with respect to the Sun.
No spacecraft can travel beyond our galaxy, so we can’t take a selfie, but Gaia is giving us the best insight yet of what our home galaxy looks like. Once all of Gaia’s observations collected over the past decade are made available in two upcoming data releases, we can expect an even sharper view of the Milky Way.
hubble, gaia, chandra, assorted observatories–I am a space picture junkie of the Tyrone Biggums variety. the joint we live in, in real-time still blows my mind. They make up the bulk of my saved wallpapers. Thanks for sharing this stuff.
So I’ve just installed it. Instructed to install Data Set Packs if it’s my first time starting Gaia Sky. I installed the “Base” data set and the next one. Any advice on which to install next? Or install all of them??
EDIT: I see various categories for Data Sets. Star, Cluster, Asteroid, Exoplanet Catalogs, and so on. I suppose it’s best to just start and tinker.
Perfect. That looks good. I have only installed three datasets and you have so many possibilities with Gaiasky. I think that’s enough for now. As soon as you are familiar with the functions and have used it a little, you will see which datasets are still necessary for you
Definitely! Thanks again. I can see there’s a learning curve. Plus, my PC is not great on specs. I have to run Gaia Sky on Low. Even then, it’s sluggish. Still good enough to learn.
My Samsung laptop has much better specifications. I’m in the process of setting up that laptop as a desktop with a 27" 4K IPS monitor along with an external keyboard and mouse. Once set up, I’ll install Gaia Sky there. Should have much better results.
It’s not related to the Gaia space telescope, but on the last congress of the CCC here in Germany, one of the leads of the Euclid space telescope has given a talk about the ongoing project which launched into space less than 2 years ago. It covers their lessons learned (up so far) and the hurdles along the way, especially from an operational perspective as well as their approaches and intends, e.g. the search for gravitational lenses within their image datasets. Sadly the talk is only available in German, but the subtitles will do I assume.
Some preview images could be seen on ESAs website.
With the appropriate specs you have a very smooth Gaiasky experience. I have a Ryzen 7 and an RX 6600 graphics card. Highly recommended
I would like to have a giant screen to use Gaiasky
I would agree with all the comments above . . . start small and go slowly. The database files (most of them are huge. . . ) wouldn’t benefit the first time user. I’m a first time user. There is much to absorb and learn using the software. Also as stated, some hardware may not function up to speed so it makes sense to use it at optimum levels your hardware can support. As with most software there will be databases and the main program to be updated from time to time to get bugs out.
