The European Space Agency has released the first-ever 3D catalogue of more than a billion stars taken through its Gaia satellite. The map of the Milky Way galaxy shows the precise position and brightness of 1,142 million stars. It also features the relative distances and movements of more than two million stars across the sky.

Alvaro Giménez, ESA’s Director of Science, said, “Today’s release gives us a first impression of the extraordinary data that await us and that will revolutionise our understanding of how stars are distributed and move across our Galaxy.” The map is based on research done over 14 months.

Gaia started its scientific work in July 2014. Timo Prusti, Gaia project scientist at ESA, said, “The beautiful map we are publishing today shows the density of stars measured by Gaia across the entire sky, and confirms that it collected superb data during its first year of operations.”