2013 is astronomical

The outgoing year for astronomers ended on a major note. On December 19, Gaia's European satellite was successfully launched. This device is designed for high -precision astrometric measurements. For almost a billion stars, coordinates will be measured and, which is the main goal of the project, distance. Thus, a three -dimensional card of our galaxy will be received. Finally, we will definitely find out how many spiral sleeves are in it, how much we are removed from the center, etc. New measurements are also important for the study of physics and the evolution of stars. GAIA will contribute to the study of exoplanets and even in the study of objects of the solar system - asteroids. But this is not enough - in the observation program there are also extragalactic objects.

True, you will have to wait for the results from the satellite’s work for quite some time. GAIA should work five years, and the final catalog will appear no earlier than 2020. But you can already summarize 2013 in astrophysicism. This will traditionally be done in the first (January) numbers. It will be told about the main scientific results obtained by astrophysicists: about the data of the Planck satellite, exoplanet studies, new results on neutron stars, observations of extragalactic objects, mysterious outbreaks and something else.

Sergey Popov