A new 3D card can take you 4,000 light years from the sun – without leaving the earth. This primary project on the part of the GAIA mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) includes more than 44 million stars, massive plumes of ionized dust and regions of immense cosmic energy. But as large as the card is, its designers already plan to extend it even more.
It is quite simple to see what the Milky Way of the Earth looks like. But with a diameter of approximately 100,000 light years, it is unlikely that humanity has an overview of the galaxy from an external point of view of soon. However, imagining with precision what it looks like is not impossible. From July 2014 to March 2025, the Gaia mission has mapped our cosmic district by examining each star and detectable nebula. Now scientists have used Galactic data from Gaia to create the most precise 3D card of the genre. But it was not as simple as pinching all these stars.
Stellar nurseries are extremely difficult to trace because their stars are generally masked by dense clouds of dust and gas. At the same time, astronomers can use this same darkness to their advantage. The Gaia Space Observatory was able to measure stellar positions through the “extinction” of the stars. In this case, “extinction” refers to the amount of light which is blocked by all this cosmic dust. Once they measured the extinction of the star, the team then made these dusty regions in a 3D card which they could draw for ionized gas hydrogen. The areas with higher levels of ionized hydrogen are known as clear indicators for neighboring stars.
In addition to 44 million “ordinary” stellar objects, the new card contains 87 stars of type O. These rare and massive cosmic entities are at the start of their lifespan, but also brilliantly burn at extremely high temperatures. The UV light emissions of a type O star are so powerful that they even tear the electrons of the hydrogen atoms that they strike, creating an even more notable ionized gas.
“There has never been an ionized gas distribution model in the local milky manner which corresponds so well to the observations of the Sky of the Sky by the telescope,” said the co-author of the astronomer and study Lewis McCallum in a press release. “This is why we are convinced that our descending view and our fly films are a good approximation of what these clouds in 3D would look like.”
McCallum and his colleagues have already noticed new particularities on the stars and the regions in which they were born. Based on an additional analysis, it seems that some of the star formation clouds have opened, creating a giant cavity which is filled with dust and gas.
“This card shows how the radiation of massive stars ionizes the surrounding interstellar medium and how dust and gas interact with this radiation,” added astronomer Sasha Zeegers.
The new map has detailed views of the California nebula, the North American nebula, the gum nebula and the superbubble oron-eridanus, but it does not stop there. According to the Gaia team, the plan is to integrate the next data set into its model currently scheduled in December 2026. With this new information, the team estimates that the card can be extended even further while including even greater and better quality data.
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