luminosity

Bibs Moreno’s project captures people in L.A. in their natural luminosity.

Bibs Moreno’s project captures people in L.A. in their natural luminosity.

The annual Perseid meteor shower requires us to leave behind our light-polluted cities for darker night skies that allow us to see the full luminosity of the celestial attraction.

The discovery was made possible by the European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft, which is mapping more than a billion stars throughout the Milky Way and beyond, tracking their motion, luminosity, temperature, and composition.

Professor Nina Hatch, who led the project team, said, "We were surprised by our ability to see so far into the outer regions of the cluster and discern the subtle colours of this light. This light can help us map dark matter if we understand where the intracluster stars came from. By studying their colours, luminosity, and configurations, we found they originated from small galaxies."