Gaia mission Archives

Long period comet C/2006 P1 (McNaught) over the Pacific ocean, as imaged from Paranal Observatory in 2007. Credit: ESO/Sebastian Deiries

Long-Period Comets’ Orbits Reflect Close Passage by Star HD 7977

by Keith CowingJune 26, 2026June 26, 2026

The Gaia mission has allowed researchers to understand the motions of stars like never before, even revealing possible interactions between our Solar System and nearby stars.

ShaneAO/ShARCS high-resolution imaging of HIP 18512 (left), ShaneAO/ShARCS imaging of HIP 45839 (center), and Keck/NIRC2 high-contrast imaging of HIP 45839 (right). Each image is oriented such that north is up and and east is to the left. HIP 18512 shows a binary at a separation of 10. ′′9 and a position angle of 12.7 ◦ . The Keck/NIRC2 imaging of HIP 45839 shows a faint source at 5. ′′3 which is not consistent with the observed RV trend and astrometric acceleration. A zoomed-in 0. ′′4 × 0. ′′4 cutout of the source is shown in the inset panel. Images are displayed with an arcsinh stretch to capture a large dynamic range (Lupton et al. 2004). -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Status Report, Stellar Cartography

Gaia Exoplanet Orbits, Demographics, and Evolution Survey (GEODES): Characteristics of Three Long-Period Companions Accelerating their Host Stars

by Keith CowingMay 26, 2026May 26, 2026

The upcoming release of Gaia DR4 will yield thousands of giant planet candidates, eventually enabling studies of giant planet eccentricities, masses, and occurrence rates across a broad range of stellar […]

Sky coverage (given in equatorial coordinates) of two FL days spaced about one month apart. The blue pattern is the complete Gaia sky coverage starting at OBMT=10,000 rev to the end of operations (OBMT=16,385.671 rev), the red track represents a FL day that lasted from January 4 to 5, 2023, and the orange track another day, between February 4 and 5, 2023. In this plot the trace for just the first telescope (FoV 1) is shown. -- astro-ph.IM

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gaia Mission, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, Stellar Cartography

The First Look of Gaia: Daily Data Quality And Instrument Health Assessment With Automated Early Warnings

by Keith CowingMay 7, 2026May 7, 2026

Editor’s note: according to NASA: “With its all-sky survey of the position, brightness and motion of over one billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, Gaia will provide a large […]

log R′HK(Teff) as a function of age for solar twins and solar analogs. Blue squares represent the six new seismic solar analogs listed in Table 1. Orange, dark-gray, and light-gray circles correspond to stellar samples from the literature, as indicated in the legend. The dashed line shows the empirical relation from Lorenzo-Oliveira et al. (2018). The green shaded region represents the 2σ uncertainty envelope around this relation. The Sun is represented by its red symbol. -- astro-ph.SR

Astronomy & Telescopes, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Space Weather & Heliophysics, Status Report, Stellar Cartography

Characterizing Six Seismic Solar Analogs Observed By Kepler, K2, And HERMES

by Keith CowingMay 3, 2026May 3, 2026

Solar analogs, stars that closely match the fundamental properties of the Sun, provide key benchmarks for testing stellar structure and evolution across different ages and activity levels.

Number of light curves for stars in LOPS2 classified per TESS sector. The entire bin height indicates all light curves for a given sector, where those with a dominant instrumental frequency f1 are indicated in purple and those with a second or third instrumental frequency (without double counting) in teal. The burgundy dotted line delineates classified nominal and extended mission data. -- astro-ph.SR

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, PLATO, Status Report, Stellar Cartography

Variability Classification Of TESS Targets in LOPS2, The First Long-term Pointing Field Of PLATO. Version 1 of The Public Variability Catalogue

by Keith CowingApril 17, 2026April 27, 2026

The PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) mission is expected to launch in January 2027. A total of 8\% of its data rate will be dedicated to complementary science […]

Fitting of exoplanets. (a) The target star is HD 88230, with a hypothetical Earth-like planet placed at a distance of 1 AU from the star. (b) The target star is again HD 88230, with a hypothetical warm Jupiter placed at a distance of 0.1 AU. (c) The target star is HD 147513, which is known to host the detected Jovian planet HD 147513 b. The angular distance measurement accuracy is 1 µas. The black points represent the simulated planetary parameters, while the red points show the residuals after removing proper motion and parallax through fitting. The blue points depict the stellar motion orbit induced by planetary perturbations, derived from a Keplerian fit to the residuals. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Status Report, Stellar Cartography

Closeby Habitable Exoplanet Survey (CHES). V. Planetary Parameters Derived from Angular Separation Variations

by Keith CowingApril 1, 2026April 1, 2026

The Closeby Habitable Exoplanet Survey (CHES) aims to achieve microarcsecond-level astrometry of about one hundred nearby FGK-type stars within 10 parsecs to detect Earth-like planets.

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, Stellar Cartography

Automatic Search For Transiting Planets In TESS-SPOC FFIs With RAVEN: Over 100 Newly Validated Planets And Over 2000 Vetted Candidates

by Keith CowingMarch 26, 2026March 26, 2026

Space-based missions such as TESS are identifying a wealth of short-period (≲30 d) transiting planets. Despite the growing number of confirmed and candidate planets, the sample is still incomplete and […]

A diagram depicting habitable zone boundaries across star type with rocky exoplanets from Bohl et al. (2026). The boundaries of the habitable zone shift based on star colour, since different wavelengths of light will heat a planet's atmosphere differently. Credit Gillis Lowry / Pablo Carlos Budassi Licence type Attribution (CC BY 4.0)

Astronomy & Telescopes, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Gaia Mission, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, People Of Astrobiology, Press Release, TRAPPIST-1

Where To Find Other Earths? New List Narrows Down The Targets

by Keith CowingMarch 20, 2026March 20, 2026

New Cornell research – co-authored by an undergraduate and two recent alumni – will help exoplanet scientists pinpoint the most likely places to look for life in the universe out […]

The astrometric and RV signals of Earth analogs orbiting nearby stars are small and below the current state of the art, while the astrometric signals of such planets are positively correlated with their angular separation but anti- correlated with their contrast and RV signal. (left) The amplitude of the astrometric reflex signal versus the radial velocity reflex signal for Earth-mass planets receiving an Earth-like instellation orbiting a sample of nearby stars that are likely to be targets for HWO direct imaging. Credit: Eric Mamajek, used with permission. (right) Contrast versus astrometric signal for a similar sample of stars hosting Earth-like planets. The size of the circles are proportional to the angular separation of the planet and the colors of the circles are proportional to the RV amplitude. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gaia Mission, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Masses of Potentially Habitable Planets Characterized by the Habitable Worlds Observatory

by Keith CowingMarch 16, 2026March 16, 2026

Constraints on the masses of exoplanets directly imaged and characterized by the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) are crucial for categorizing these planets and interpreting their spectra.

A mass migration of stellar twins. Stars similar to our Sun form a mass migration from the center of the Milky Way, occurring approximately 4 to 6 billion years ago. Credit NAOJ

Astronomy & Telescopes, Gaia Mission, Press Release, Stellar Cartography

Our Sun Escaped Together With Stellar Twins From Galaxy Center

by Keith CowingMarch 13, 2026March 13, 2026

Researchers have uncovered evidence for our Sun joining a mass migration of similar “twins” leaving the core regions of our galaxy, 4 to 6 billion years ago. The team created […]

Gaia mission

Long-Period Comets’ Orbits Reflect Close Passage by Star HD 7977

Gaia Exoplanet Orbits, Demographics, and Evolution Survey (GEODES): Characteristics of Three Long-Period Companions Accelerating their Host Stars

The First Look of Gaia: Daily Data Quality And Instrument Health Assessment With Automated Early Warnings

Characterizing Six Seismic Solar Analogs Observed By Kepler, K2, And HERMES

Variability Classification Of TESS Targets in LOPS2, The First Long-term Pointing Field Of PLATO. Version 1 of The Public Variability Catalogue

Closeby Habitable Exoplanet Survey (CHES). V. Planetary Parameters Derived from Angular Separation Variations

Automatic Search For Transiting Planets In TESS-SPOC FFIs With RAVEN: Over 100 Newly Validated Planets And Over 2000 Vetted Candidates

Where To Find Other Earths? New List Narrows Down The Targets

Masses of Potentially Habitable Planets Characterized by the Habitable Worlds Observatory

Our Sun Escaped Together With Stellar Twins From Galaxy Center

Dinosaur-killing Asteroid Also Created A Dust Cloud That Insulated Earth, Charbroiling Cretaceous Creatures

Current Water Trapping Micro-habitats On The Surface Of Mars

Methanotrophy Under Extreme Alkalinity In A Serpentinizing System

ANDES, The High-resolution Spectrograph Oof The ELT: Simulated Performance Of The CORO Module And Overview Of The High-contrast Capabilities For Exoplanet Observations

When Polymers Meet Primitive Membranes: How Molecular Cooperation May Have Helped Life Begin