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
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No spacecraft can travel beyond our galaxy, so it is impossible to take pictures of the Milky Way from the outside. Instead, we can rely on accurate measurements made by ESA’s Gaia mission of the positions and motions of many of our galaxy’s stars. Using computers to model Gaia’s data, scientists can construct different views of our cosmic home.
In this image we see the Milky Way as if we were hovering above it. We can admire our galaxy’s grand spiral structure in its stunning beauty and clearly identify the different parts; a central glowing bar with several spiraling arms around it. The Sun sits in the outskirts of the immense spiral, at 26 600 light-years (8200 parsec) from the centre, towards the bottom in this image. Annotations give the names and mark the locations of the spiral arms.