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Wow – didn’t think I’d be in tears today, but this message sent home from Gaia as it was shut down forever today hits hard 😭

What you’re seeing is a map of the 106 CCD detectors that Gaia used to measure the positions of billions of stars in the Milky Way for the past 11 years πŸ›°οΈβœ¨

They were turned off in a special sequence … πŸ˜•

#SpaceScience#Astronomy#Science