Prepare to feel really, really small: The newest map of the Milky Way charts an impressive 1 billion stars — and that's still barely 1 percent of what the galaxy has to offer. Using observations from the European Space Agency's Gaia probe, astronomers have managed to make a map that's "20 times more complete" than ever before, and one that offers new levels of preciseness, The Guardian reported Wednesday. "Every mission to come will use this map," said Gerry Gilmore, the U.K.'s principal investigator for the Gaia mission:
Perhaps even more exciting than the map's unveiling is the revelation that there may be way more stars in the galaxy than previously thought. Astronomers have estimated there are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, and they initially predicted the Gaia probe would spot 1 billion stars by the end of next year. Now, that estimate has more than doubled. "It looks very much like we underestimated the number of stars," said Floor van Leeuwen, the manager of Gaia's data processing. "We think we will see 2 to 2.5 billion stars."
While the new map may be more complete than ever before, it's also indicative of how far we are from its total completion. "We don't actually know what the Milky Way looks like," Gilmore said. "It's astonishingly difficult, when you're inside something, to find out what it looks like."
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