Rare glimpse of the supreme stargazer

Email us at inbox@skyatnightmagazine.com MESSAGE OF THE MONTH During January and February, the Gaia spacecraft went through a series of end-of-mission engineering tests that put it into an orientation that reflected more sunlight towards Earth and made it a better imaging target. Here’s the image of it I managed to take from my garden in suburban Surrey. It shows the track of the spacecraft relative to the stars during almost a complete passage across the sky, from 8:30pm on 4 February to 5:30am the next day. During the run, a total of 250 frames were shot at around two-minute intervals and I used 84 of these for the Gaia track. Gaia is at the L2 Lagrange Point, about 1.5 million kilometres away from Earth in the direction opposite to the…

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BBC Sky at Night United Kingdom (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2025

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