Summary: The telescope Gaia has released its first test image of a star cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). This is only a test image though, Gaia's real job is to track and characterize points of light moving across its big detector. These points of light could be anything from a star, an asteroid, or even flashes of light caused by explosions such as supernovae. The test image simply verified that all the electronics are working and communicating with each other properly.
Gaia will be making a 3D map of a small area of the sky over five years. Ideally, at the end of the mission, it will know the coordinates of the brightest stars to within an error of seven micro-arcseconds. This angle is the same angle as viewing a small coin like a euro on the surface of the moon from earth; incredibly small! Currently, the best precision is to within 1%, and as astronomers try to measure stars farther away, this error will become more noticeable. Gaia will double check our current methods of measurement and help limit the amount of error when measuring other stars. This means that our future measurements can be more accurate and we will be able to, hopefully, have a more accurate estimate of how fast our universe is expanding.
BBC News
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