B Is the Gaia Telescope's Shutdown Impacting Our Ability to Map the Milky Way?

[Hornbein]

Running out of fuel to maintain its L2 orbit, the Gaia telescope satellite has been sent into a heliocentric orbit and shut down.

https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/iow_20250327

 

[jedishrfu]

Yes, the news said they planned to move it out of the coveted L2 orbital area so as not to clutter the area with space junk and have GAIA take an orbit about the Sun.

 

[pinball1970]

 

[snorkack]

But that´s just the night panorama.
How much of the light of the night turned out to come from stars which were too bright and dazzled Gaia (brighter than +6), how much from stars that were too dim, how much from stars that were too far?
Now that Gaia is gone, do we have any accurate telescopes remaining?

 

[pinball1970]

But that´s just the night panorama.
How much of the light of the night turned out to come from stars which were too bright and dazzled Gaia (brighter than +6), how much from stars that were too dim, how much from stars that were too far?
Now that Gaia is gone, do we have any accurate telescopes remaining?

You are hard to please, that is a beautiful image. The data from Gaia will be keeping the scientists busy till 2030 as an estimate.

 

[pinball1970]

Now that Gaia is gone, do we have any accurate telescopes remaining?

Yes lots!
Ground based and space telescopes.

Gaia mapped the milky way including 1000s of wide binaries (check the MOND v Dark matter threads) black holes and dwarf galaxies surrounding the milky way.

Hubble has been active since the 90s, Webb and Euclid are still at L2.
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Gaia/Telescopes

Retired and active, they lists by wavelength capability.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_telescopes

Vera Rubin first light this year too.