Terremotos! Espaçonave Gaia vê estrelas estranhas na pesquisa mais detalhada da Via Láctea até hoje

Gaia é a missão da Agência Espacial Europeia (ESA) para criar um mapa 3D preciso de mais de um bilhão de estrelas em todo o planeta.[{” attribute=””>Milky Way galaxy and beyond. Although it launched all the way back in 2013, it is still working to accurately map the the motions, luminosity, temperature and composition of the stars in our galaxy.

Along the way it has made numerous discoveries, such as detecting a shake in the Milky Way, the observation of almost 500 explosions in galaxy cores, crystallization in white dwarfs, and discovering a billion-year-old river of stars. It also revealed the total weight of the Milky Way, a direct measurement of the galactic bar in the Milky Way, mysterious fossil spiral arms in the Milky Way, and a new member of the Milky Way family.

Today marks the data of the third data release from Gaia. The first data release was on September 14, 2016, followed by the second data release on April 25, 2018. On December 3, 2020, they did an early third data release with detailed data on more than 1.8 billion stars. All this data is helping to reveal the origin, structure, and evolutionary history of our galaxy.

This image shows four sky maps made with the new ESA Gaia data released on June 13, 2022. Credit: © ESA/Gaia/DPAC; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Today (June 13, 2022), ESA’s Gaia mission releases its new treasure trove of data about our home galaxy. Astronomers describe strange ‘starquakes’, stellar DNA, asymmetric motions, and other fascinating insights in this most detailed Milky Way survey to date.

Gaia is ESA’s mission to create the most accurate and complete multi-dimensional map of the Milky Way. This allows astronomers to reconstruct our home galaxy’s structure and past evolution over billions of years, and to better understand the lifecycle of stars and our place in the Universe.

O que há de novo na versão de dados 3?

O lançamento de dados do Gaia 3 contém detalhes novos e aprimorados de quase dois bilhões de estrelas em nossa galáxia. O catálogo inclui novas informações, incluindo composições químicastemperaturas estelares, cores, massas, idades e a velocidade com que as estrelas se aproximam ou se afastam de nós (velocidade radial). Muitas dessas informações foram reveladas pelo recém-lançado Espectroscopia Dados, uma tecnologia na qual a luz das estrelas é dividida em suas cores componentes (como um arco-íris). Os dados também incluem subconjuntos especiais de estrelas, como aquelas que mudam de brilho ao longo do tempo.

Outra novidade neste conjunto de dados é o maior catálogo até hoje de estrelas binárias, milhares de objetos do Sistema Solar, como asteroides e luas planetárias, e milhões de galáxias e quasares fora da Via Láctea.

terremotos

Uma das descobertas mais surpreendentes que emergem dos novos dados é que o Gaia é capaz de detectar terremotos estelares – pequenos movimentos na superfície de uma estrela – que mudam as formas das estrelas, algo para o qual o observatório não foi originalmente construído.

Anteriormente, Gaia já havia encontrado oscilações radiais que fazem com que as estrelas inchem e contraiam periodicamente, mantendo sua forma esférica. Mas Gaya agora também detectou outras vibrações que se assemelham a um tsunami em grande escala. Essas oscilações não radiais alteram a forma global da estrela e, portanto, são difíceis de detectar.

Gaia encontrou fortes terremotos não radiais em milhares de estrelas. Gaia também detectou vibrações em estrelas que raramente haviam sido vistas antes. Essas estrelas não devem ter terremotos de acordo com a teoria atual, enquanto Gaia os detectou em sua superfície.

“Starquakes nos ensinam muito sobre as estrelas, especialmente seu funcionamento interno. Gaia abre uma mina de ouro para a ciência estelar massiva”, diz Connie Aerts de KU Leuven na Bélgica, membro da Gaya Collaboration.

DNA estelar

O material de que são feitas as estrelas pode nos contar onde elas nasceram e sua próxima jornada e, portanto, sobre a história da Via Láctea. Com a divulgação dos dados hoje, Gaia revela o maior mapa químico da galáxia juntamente com movimentos 3D, desde a nossa vizinhança solar até as galáxias menores ao nosso redor.

Algumas estrelas contêm mais “metais pesados” do que outras. durante o[{” attribute=””>Big Bang, only light elements were formed (hydrogen and helium). All other heavier elements – called metals by astronomers – are built inside stars. When stars die, they release these metals into the gas and dust between the stars called the interstellar medium, out of which new stars form. Active star formation and death will lead to an environment that is richer in metals. Therefore, a star’s chemical composition is a bit like its DNA, giving us crucial information about its origin.

This image shows an artistic impression of the Milky Way, and on top of that an overlay showing the location and densities of a young star sample from Gaia’s data release 3 (in yellow-green). The “you are here” sign points towards the Sun. Credit: © ESA/Gaia/DPAC; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

With Gaia, we see that some stars in our galaxy are made of primordial material, while others like our Sun are made of matter enriched by previous generations of stars. Stars that are closer to the center and plane of our galaxy are richer in metals than stars at larger distances. Gaia also identified stars that originally came from different galaxies than our own, based on their chemical composition.

“Our galaxy is a beautiful melting pot of stars,” says Alejandra Recio-Blanco of the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in France, who is a member of the Gaia collaboration.

“This diversity is extremely important, because it tells us the story of our galaxy’s formation. It reveals the processes of migration within our galaxy and accretion from external galaxies. It also clearly shows that our Sun, and we, all belong to an ever-changing system, formed thanks to the assembly of stars and gas of different origins.”

This image shows the orbits of the more than 150,000 asteroids in Gaia’s data release 3, from the inner parts of the Solar System to the Trojan asteroids at the distance of Jupiter, with different color codes. The yellow circle at the center represents the Sun. Blue represents the inner part of the Solar System, where the Near Earth Asteroids, Mars crossers, and terrestrial planets are. The Main Belt, between Mars and Jupiter, is green. Jupiter trojans are red. Credit: © ESA/Gaia/DPAC; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO, Acknowledgements: P. Tanga (Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur)

Binary stars, asteroids, quasars, and more

Other papers that are published today reflect the breadth and depth of Gaia’s discovery potential. A new binary star catalog presents the mass and evolution of more than 800 thousand binary systems, while a new asteroid survey comprising 156 thousand rocky bodies is digging deeper into the origin of our Solar System. Gaia is also revealing information about 10 million variable stars, mysterious macro-molecules between stars, as well as quasars and galaxies beyond our own cosmic neighborhood.

The position of each asteroid at 12:00 CEST on June 13, 2022, is plotted. Each asteroid is a segment representing its motion over 10 days. Inner bodies move faster around the Sun (yellow circle at the center). Blue represents the inner part of the Solar System, where the Near Earth Asteroids, Mars crossers, and terrestrial planets are. The Main Belt, between Mars and Jupiter, is green. The two orange ‘clouds’ correspond to the Trojan asteroids of Jupiter. Credit: © ESA/Gaia/DPAC; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO, Acknowledgements: P. Tanga (Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur)

“Unlike other missions that target specific objects, Gaia is a survey mission. This means that while surveying the entire sky with billions of stars multiple times, Gaia is bound to make discoveries that other more dedicated missions would miss. This is one of its strengths, and we can’t wait for the astronomy community to dive into our new data to find out even more about our galaxy and its surroundings than we could’ve imagined,” says Timo Prusti, Project Scientist for Gaia at ESA.