Panning across new Gaia view of Omega Centauri

ESA's star-surveying Gaia mission has released a treasure trove of new data in its ‘focused product release’. As part of this release Gaia explored Omega Centauri, the largest globular cluster that can be seen from Earth and a great example of a ‘typical’ cluster. This video starts by marking the section of Omega Centauri shown in Gaia’s new view of the cluster and then pans across the new image, moving from the outer edges of the cluster towards the newly filled-in core.

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Alt-text: This video begins with a view of the star cluster Omega Centauri, visible as a roughly circular collection of stars set against a dark background. An overlaid rectangle identifies the region of sky imaged as part of a new Gaia data release; this rectangle then moves to fill the screen, and the camera pans across the new view of the cluster. The pan begins at the outer edges of the cluster, where stars are sparser, and moves gradually to the denser, brighter centre.

Acknowledgments: Based on the paper ‘Gaia Focused Product Release: Sources from Service Interface Function Image Analysis – Half a Million New Sources in Omega Centauri’ by Gaia Collaboration, K. Weingrill et al.; Images by Katja Weingrill and Alexey Mints; Video created by Stefan Jordan; Visualisation performed using Gaia Sky (developed by Toni Sagristà)