Gaia satellite opened its eyes

Gaia, the satellite that surveyed one billion European stars, began the Milky Way's most accurate mission to date map.

>>>Gaia telescope has gone into operational orbit

Launched into space in December last year, Gaia satellite has just reached the rally point about 1.5 million km from Earth.

According to the BBC, engineers are now adjusting two telescopes and three satellite devices, preparing the final steps for Gaia to begin the mission to map the most accurate locations, as well as the movement of a billion stars.

Gaia transmitted the first image of the Milky Way star mission - (Photo: AFP)

The first experimental image shows a condensed constellation at the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Milky Way's satellite galaxy.

When Gaia entered orbit, the data collected would be enormous, exceeding 1 million Gigabytes, equivalent to data stored on about 200,000 DVDs.

With Gaia's constant sweeping sky, each of the 1 billion stars will be observed an average of 70 times over the next 5 years.

Besides position and movement, Gaia also measured other key physical elements of each star, including brightness, temperature and chemical composition.

It took 3 years from the completion of the five-year mission, European experts published the final map of 1 billion stars out of the Milky Way's 100 billion stars.