Gaia mapped two billion stars in the Milky Way

The new history of the Milky Way

New data garnered from European spacecraft Gaia in 2018 allowed astronomers to rewrite the Milky Way Galaxy's biography. Charting the movements of more than 1 billion stars, Gaia made astronomers reassess how our galaxy formed. Evidence of long-ago collisions and proof of unexpected and unusual movements were just the beginning of the beginning.

View maps of the Milky Way across all wavelengths of light

By combining imaging from ground- and space-based telescopes designed to capture specific wavelengths of light, phenomena across a range of energies can be observed. If limited to a single frequency range, astronomers would not be aware of some cosmological events, such as those whose visible light is blocked by dust.

A map of the Milky Way

Curious about the layout of the cosmos? This resource presents a detailed map of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Learn the basic structure and identify prominent global clusters, nebulae, main arms, spurs, and constellations. With numerous different maps and mediums, get oriented with the universe’s configuration and where exactly we fit into it.

See to the edge of the universe with this two-decade astronomy project

A New Mexico telescope has captured astronomical data for two decades to compile this map of the universe. Starting from earth and ending at the "edge" of the universe, it shows one slice of the cosmos: a total of 200,000 galaxies.

The European Space Agency's Euclid telescope maps dark matter

As light rays travel near massive objects in space, their paths can be distorted on their way to Earth, causing objects to appear displaced, magnified, shrunken, or sheared. By simulating these effects for various mass distributions, astronomers can match the distortion to a simulated mass and compare it with the observed visible matter to infer the presence of dark matter.

New model replaces the Milky Way's central black hole with dark matter

A study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society states that a dense core of fermionic dark matter, rather than a supermassive black hole, could explain both the rapid orbits of stars near the Milky Way's center and the galaxy's large-scale rotation detected in Gaia mission data.

Zoom from Earth to Maisie's galaxy

Discovered by the Webb Telescope in 2022, Maise’s Galaxy (named after the nine-year-old daughter of the scientist who discovered it) was found as part of a survey of a section of the universe known as the Extended Growth Strip, home to thousands of galaxies. This video takes you from Earth to Maise’s galaxy, formed roughly 300 million years after the birth of the universe.

Mapping the universe's 1.3 million quasars

Quasars form the core of active galaxies where supermassive black holes devour unimaginable amounts of matter. You can see a map of all 1.3 million of these objects with this 3D map. It was assembled with data from the Gaia spacecraft and shows how the spread of dark matter across space matches that described by the Cosmic Microwave Background.

The Milky Way only has a 50-50 chance of merging with the Andromeda galaxy

Previously considered a near certainty, research data from Hubble and GAIA have reduced the likelihood of a collision and merger between the two galaxies. Instead, the data suggests the Milky Way will absorb the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy, in the next two billion years.

New ways of seeing the cosmos have redrawn the map of human identity

From Galileo’s crude spyglass to the James Webb Space Telescope, each technological leap has expanded our observational reach and redefined philosophical and moral conceptions of our place in the universe. Identifying signs of life through the study of exoplanet atmospheres would represent the next great revolution.

Explaining the galaxy-sized gas bubbles hovering around the Milky Way

Depth perception is hard to achieve when looking out into space. For decades, two camps of astrophysicists have disagreed over the nature of the North Polar Spur, a radio-wave emitting arc above the Milky Way galaxy's plane. Was it close and relatively small? Or was it faraway and much more massive? New research utilizing X-ray mapping of the galaxy has helped clarify the existence of both so-called smaller Fermi bubbles and larger X-ray ones.

The European Space Agency is building a space-based gravitational wave observatory

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna will consist of three spacecraft forming an equilateral triangle that will trail Earth as it orbits the sun. Lasers will travel 2.5 million kilometers along the sides of the triangle between these spacecraft to detect massive objects undergoing mergers or inspiraling, as well as speculative phenomena (e.g., cosmic strings).

Webb discovers galaxy that formed 280 million years after the Big Bang

The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a galaxy that formed just 280 million years after the Big Bang. It is another in a series of increasingly ancient galaxies that, according to current formation models, should not have been able to form so quickly after the birth of the universe.

Explore our favorite visualization of the immense scale of space, from an astronaut to the size of the observable universe

Sagittarius A* is a massive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy

For years, it was known as a strong source of radio signals, but there wasn't enough data to adequately describe or identify it. Orbital movements of nearby stars would indicate it had 4.6 million times the sun's mass, proving it was a black hole.

The Hubble Space Telescope made discoveries within our solar system and across the universe

The observatory helped confirm the presence of water on Jupiter's moon Europa, and uncovered seasonal variations on planets like Uranus. It also observed exoplanets and gravitational lensing, proved the existence of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies, and detected the accelerated expansion of the universe.

Astronomers use a set of scaffolding methods to measure distances across the universe

Different methods are used depending on how far away an object is—from radar for nearby planets, to parallax for stars, to redshift and supernovae for distant galaxies. These tools allow scientists to chart the universe across unimaginable scales using astronomical units (AU), light-years, and parsecs.

Explore a gallery of astronomical images curated by the European Space Agency

The collection includes illustrations and images of aurorae, planets, stars, galaxies, stellar nurseries, star clusters, exoplanets, quasars and black holes. Mission photography of astronauts, shuttles and telescopes is also featured.

There may be as many as 300 million potentially habitable planets in our galaxy

The estimate comes from a study using data from the Kepler space telescope—a project aimed at finding exoplanets—and considers exoplanets similar in size to Earth around sun-like stars. These have a greater potential to possess liquid water.

This Milky Way photo took 12 years to shoot

Finnish astrophotographer J-P Metsavainio has released a Milky Way photo that took him nearly 12 years to create. The 1.7-gigapixel image has a cumulative

Explore how far you've traveled through space while living on Earth

Using the "Cosmic Odometer," users can enter their birthday and learn how far they have moved through space due to the combined effects of Earth's rotation around its axis, the planet's orbit around the sun, the solar system's trajectory through the Milky Way, and the galaxy's motion through the universe.

Meet Hipparchus, the Greek astronomer who created the world's first star map

Astronomer Hipparchus created accurate maps of the night sky way ahead of his time, with coordinates sometimes within a single degree of modern values. Hipparchus founded a new theory of star motion, modeling the sky as a celestial sphere with coordinates similar to latitude and longitude—concepts only recently created in Hipparchus' time.

The Earth orbits the sun within the Orion Spur arm of the Milky Way galaxy

The solar system is roughly halfway between the galaxy's outer rim and its center, which is located about 25,000 light years away. The Milky Way is itself one of hundreds of thousands of galaxies in the Virgo Supercluster.

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

What is galactic archaeology?

In the same way that archaeologists excavate and analyze artifacts of human civilization, galactic archaeologists observe the light in the universe to glean lessons on its age, evolution, and more. Learn about this niche area of study with this 10-minute podcast.

Voyager 1 captured Earth as a 'Pale Blue Dot' from 6 billion kilometers away

On Feb. 14, 1990, NASA's Voyager 1 space probe took the farthest photo of Earth ever captured. Earth appears so small in the image that it takes up less than a single pixel out of 640,000 in the photo's frame.

An exoplanet detection method involves measuring a host star's auroras

Astronomers have reported indirectly identifying a planet by observing its debris interacting with the magnetic field of the star it orbits. The interaction is a larger-scale version of the auroras observed on Jupiter, which are produced when material released by its moon, Io, interacts with the gas giant's magnetic field.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

Stars appear to twinkle because turbulence in the motion of molecules in Earth's atmosphere causes light to bend and wiggle rapidly on its way to the surface—a phenomenon called scintillation.

See how each of the more than two million known species relates to each other—and to common ancestors—in this zoomable tree of life.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

While the sun's gravity keeps the planets in orbit, their gravity also pulls on the sun, causing it and everything else in the solar system to orbit around a mutual balance point called the barycenter—the true center of the solar system.

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

Astronauts have repaired genetic damage in space using CRISPR—a molecular tool that can make precise changes to DNA and is used in single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is the largest ground war in Europe since World War II in casualties, forces mobilized, and displacement of civilians.

Volcanic activity may have triggered the Black Death by spewing gases that led to crop failures in Europe, thus forcing the import of grain ships with plague-infested fleas.

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is 'Afghan Girl' (1984) by Steve McCurry, yet the subject Sharbat Gula went much of her life without being identified or benefitting from the image's success.

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

The United States is one of only around two dozen countries with a fully federal system of government, in which power is divided between national and state governments.