The European Space Agency is set to unveil a three-dimensional map of a billion stars in our galaxy that is 1,000 times more complete than anything existing today. A space-based probe called Gaia, launched in December 2013, has been circling the Sun 1.5 million kilometres beyond Earth’s orbit and snapping pictures of the Milky Way. The satellite’s billion-pixel camera, the largest ever in space, is so powerful it would be able to gauge the diameter of a human hair at a distance of 1,000 kilometres, meaning nearby stars have been located with unprecedented accuracy.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-14/milky-way-gaia-3d-map-1000-times-more-complete/7843092
