The consortium of researchers, constructors and inventors of the Gaia satellite, that tracks the movements of stars in the Milky Way, will receive the 2023 Berkeley Prize. This has just been announced by the American Astronomical Society (AAS). Anthony Brown, an anstronomer at Leiden University and leader of the data processing team, will collect the award on behalf of the consortium on January 12, 2023.
Dutch astronomers play an important role in the processing of the enormous volume of data from the Gaia satellite. As a result, they are often the first to discover peculiarities. For example, that the Milky Way was formed by multiple mergers, that stars in the Milky Way often travel in groups and that the young Milky Way swallowed up a gigantic rival galaxy.
More information in the English post of the AAS