New Gaia image of Omega Centauri

ESA's star-surveying Gaia mission has released a treasure trove of new data as part of its ‘focused product release’. As part of this data release Gaia explored Omega Centauri, the largest globular cluster that can be seen from Earth and a great example of a ‘typical’ cluster.  

The spacecraft’s beautiful new view of Omega Centauri is shown here as visualised by Gaia Sky. It combines stars as seen in Gaia Data Release 3 and via a new Gaia mode implemented as part of the new data release. Stars with varying brightness levels are on display, ranging from a magnitude just below the naked eye's visibility limit to those over a million times fainter. 

The team has revealed 526 587 stars that Gaia had not seen before, detecting stars that lie too close together to be measured in the telescope’s regular pipeline and those in the cluster core that are up to 15 times fainter than previously seen. The new data reveal 10 times more stars in Omega Centauri; this new knowledge will enable researchers to study the cluster’s structure, how the constituent stars are distributed, how they’re moving, and more. 

Read more 

Alt-text: This image shows a star cluster set against a dark background. The further in towards the cluster’s centre, the higher the density of stars.

Acknowledgments: Toni Sagristà, Stefan Jordan, Katja Weingrill, Alexey Mints, Tineke Roegiers