Gaia uncovers its first exoplanet

Thousands more could be hiding in the retired craft’s data

A giant planet just 244 lightyears from Earth has been uncovered within data gathered by the Gaia satellite. The discovery of Gaia-4b marks the first time the spacecraft’s data has been solely responsible for an exoplanet discovery. Gaia ended its scientific operations in January 2025, but its data will still be analysed for years to come. For a decade, the craft has monitored the positions of billions of bright stars, a technique called astrometry. For stars in our local cosmic neighbourhood, the measurements were accurate enough to detect the stellar ‘wobble’ created by the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet, which makes the star appear to move across the sky with a corkscrew motion. There are many stars that show such motion, but Gaia-4b is the first to be confirmed…

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

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