Gaia detects the most massive black hole of stellar origin in the Milky Way

On April 16, 2014, we have published the discovery of a massive black hole during validation thanks to DR4 data from the Gaia mission. It is an object of 33 solar masses located less than 2,000 light years from Earth, in the constellation of Aquila, the Eagle. These types of black holes have been previously found through gravitational wave observations. Now, for the first time, such a massive black hole of stellar origin is detected within the Milky Way. Gaia-BH3 (as the new object has been called) has a giant star orbiting around it with a period of 11.6 years. The astrometric data that...

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KRATOS: 2TB from Óscar Jimenez Arranz

The Universitat de Barcelona (UB) has published at the Repositori de Dades de Recerca (RDR, research data repository) a 2-Terabytes (TB) dataset “KRATOS: A large suite of N-body simulations to interpret the stellar kinematics of LMC-like discs” generated by the researcher Óscar Jiménez Arranz and linked to his doctoral thesis dedicated to the study of the galactic and kinematic structure of the Magellanic Clouds. The dataset consists of 28 simulations with 183 files each, along with different scripts to run them and a README file documenting the content. A large part of KRATOS is...

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SPACIOUS: Open positions

There are a few open positions: Research support technician position

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Gaia UB team meeting at Collbató

Last Friday 14th of April 2023, our annual meeting took place in Collbató.

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Veus de Gaia, la «màquina dels descobriments»

Mercè Romero i Josep Manel Carrasco són dos de la vintena d’investigadors del grup Gaia UB, o sigui, dues de les veus de la missió ESA Gaia. En aquesta entrevista a la web de la Facultat de Física de la UB parlen de Gaia. ESA Gaia va fer públic al mes de juny el tercer release, el Gaia Data Release (Gaia DR3), és a dir, les dades recopilades pel telescopi en els primers tres anys de la missió. Va tenir molta repercussió mediàtica. «Estem molt contents d’estar en totes les etapes del procés i de l’impacte en la comunitat científica de les dades que es publiquen» i «molt contents de veure que...

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Memory game

You want to train your memory? Gaia mission can help you with that while having fun!! The game consists in 2 copies of 20 different images, in total 40 cards with images related with the Gaia Mission. The aim of the game is to match up the identical images. You can play this game online: https://gaia.ub.edu/memory/ Steps: Each player turn a pair of cards up in their turn in order to locate the two identical cards. If identical images are found they will remain uncovered and the player has another turn. Otherwise, both cards will be hidden again and the player loses the turn. You must try to...

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