The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThis plot shows the distribution of faint gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), as observed by the IBIS imaging telescope on board ESA’s Integral gamma-ray observatory, in ‘supergalactic coordinates’ (such coordinate system is a spherical system whose equator is aligned with the so-called supergalactic plane, a major structure in the local universe formed by the distribution of near-by clusters of galaxies, out to several hundred megaparsecs; 1 megaparsec corresponds to about 3.26 million light years).
As it can be seen, these faint gamma-ray bursts are mainly distributed along the supergalactic plane.