A shot of a TV screen with many green squares, interspersed with grey ones spelling out the word “bye”.

Notices where this attachment appears

1. Embed this notice
   Mark McCaughrean (markmccaughrean@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 27-Mar-2025 19:50:39 JST Mark McCaughrean

   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 🛰️✨

   They were turned off in a special sequence … 😕

   #SpaceScience #Astronomy #Science