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This week’s newsletter is shorter than usual as I’ve been travelling. Look out for a regular length newsletter next week.

Job well done

The European Space Agency’s Gaia mission recently ended after over a decade of operations. Gaia proved hugely reliable, encountering no serious problems during its mission and just kind of doing its thing without any fuss. The mission only ended because the spacecraft has used all of its fuel – it’s not one of those ones which can be extended indefinitely until something breaks, which is a real shame because the telescope itself was still working perfectly.

ESA has so far made three data releases based on Gaia’s observations. Two more are planned, with the final one about five years from now and including everything from all of the mission’s observations. As a professional astronomer, I can’t overstate just how useful all of this data is (and will continue to be for a long, long time). Gaia has taken measurements of more or less every visible star in the Milky Way, creating reference data which is useful for almost literally everything we do. It didn't produce impressive images and grab the public attention like missions like Hubble and JWST, but it has had a profound effect on the whole of astronomy that will not be matched for quite some time.

ESA have released a video summarising Gaia’s achievements which is worth watching:

Gaia thumbnail image credit: Spacecraft: ESA/ATG medialab; Milky Way: ESA/Gaia/DPAC. Acknowledgement: A. Moitinho., CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

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Finally

Please enjoy this lovely Mars boulder:

What is Three Alpha? Other than being the name of the newsletter you’re reading now, the name “three alpha” comes from the triple-alpha process, a nuclear chain reaction in stars which turns helium into carbon. Read more here.

Who writes this? My name is Dr. Adam McMaster. I’m an astronomer in the UK, where I mainly work on finding black holes. You can find me on BlueSky, @adammc.space.

Let me know what you think! You can send comments and feedback by hitting reply or by emailing [email protected].