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Телескопът Gaia направи първата си снимкаКосмическият апарат Gaia (Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics) направи първата си снимка, съобщи ВВС, позовавайки се на Европейската космическа агенция. Задачата на новия телескоп е да картографира триизмерно Млечния път. Той беше изстрелян през декември миналата година и сега се намира на 1,5 милиона км от Земята, пише inews.bg. Инженерите настройват двата му телескопа и другите три инструмента и го подготвят да започне да картографира точното положение и движението на 1 милиард звезди. Като част от процеса Gaia направи снимка на малък звезден куп в Големия Магеланов облак, който е на 160 000 светлинни години от Земята. Снимката не е впечатляваща сама по себе си, а по-скоро показва, че електрониката, компютърът и камерата работят. Gaia не е предназначена да прави снимки като "Хъбъл", работният ѝ режим въобще няма да е такъв – каза проф. Гери Гилмор от университета Кембридж. – Тя ще чертае квадратчета около всичките ...
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Gaia 'billion-star surveyor' returns test image Europe's billion-star surveyor, Gaia, is on track to begin operations in the next two or three months. Launched in December, the satellite has now taken up its observing station some 1.5 million km from Earth. Engineers are currently commissioning Gaia's two telescopes and its three instruments, getting them ready to begin mapping the precise positions and motions of one-thousand-million stars. As part of that process, an image has been produced of a small star cluster. This grouping is sited in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a companion galaxy to our own Milky Way, some 160,000 light-years in the distance. If the picture just released by the European Space Agency looks somewhat underwhelming, that is not really surprising - taking pretty vistas of the sky is not what this mission is about. Rather, Gaia's job when operational will be to track and characterise points of light moving across its big camera detector - be those stars, asteroids, comets or the flashes generated by exploding objects such as supernovae - to work out how far away they are and how they are moving in relation to everything else. Prof Gerry Gilmore, the UK Gaia principal investigator from Cambridge University, told BBC News: "This image tells us that they've turned on the electronics, that they've turned on the computer, and that they've turned on Gaia's incredible British-built camera - and it's all working. "Gaia was not designed to take Hubble-like pictures; this is not its operating mode at all. What it will eventually do is draw little boxes around each of the stars you see in this picture and send just that information to the ground." The satellite has been given an initial mission duration of five years to make its 3D map of the sky. By repeatedly viewing its targets, it should get to know the brightest stars' coordinates down to an error of just seven micro-arcseconds - an angle equivalent to a euro coin on the Moon being observed from Earth. One of the benefits of such study will be to refine the distance "ladder" used to measure scale in Universe. This ladder describes a number of techniques that lean on each other in a stepwise fashion to calculate the separation between Earth and some of the most far flung objects in the cosmos. To the bottom of this ladder is the trigonometric parallax technique that Gaia will employ to measure distances. Traditionally, this has only worked with stars inside the Milky Way. But Gaia's advanced optics will for the first time extend parallax to stars in the LMC. In the past, the cluster's position has been determined only indirectly by studying the next rung up - the characteristic pulsations of stars. Having parallax measurements in the LMC instead will allow astronomers to better calibrate the ladder and the techniques used to figure out even greater distances. Prof Gilmore said: "Currently, we have precision distances - i.e. to 1% accuracy - to only one Cepheid (pulsating) star, which is Polaris (the North Star). So the whole distance scale to the Magellanic clouds depends on very shaky foundations. Gaia will be the 'sanity check' on the distance ladder where all of our different methods overlap. "But Gaia will do even more because until now the accuracy to which we could work meant that we had to assume the Large Magellanic Cloud was a single point at one distance. We've had to average out properties. With Gaia, we will resolve out the LMC in three dimensions and that will tells us far more about its structure, and that will open it up to proper scientific study." Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmosResources: Gaia 'billion-star surveyor' returns test image - More news from this category Avalanche science: uncovering snow's deadly secrets14.02.2014, 03:47 BBC News.co.uk Termites inspire robot builders13.02.2014, 21:17 BBC News.co.uk Robot army 'to help alleviate future floods'13.02.2014, 21:03 BBC News.co.uk Declaration signed on illegal wildlife trade13.02.2014, 20:39 BBC News.co.uk Thousands hit in Tesco.com attack13.02.2014, 20:28 BBC News.co.uk - Similar news China's consumer inflation holds steady at 2.5%14.02.2014, 04:52 BBC News.co.uk Syria crisis: UN 'must stop flagrant violation of humanitarian law'14.02.2014, 04:25 BBC News.co.uk Avalanche science: uncovering snow's deadly secrets14.02.2014, 03:47 BBC News.co.uk Mills & Boon's world of innuendo14.02.2014, 03:22 BBC News.co.uk Schools make 'tactical exam appeals' to boost scores14.02.2014, 03:07 BBC News.co.uk