Imagine a billion pixel camera!!! that’s right – that’s the scale of the camera fitted on the Gaia – a space telescope that blasted off successfully, 6 days before Christmas from French Guiana. Built by the European Space agency (ESA) ,Gaia has the mission of making a three dimensional picture of our galaxy-the Milky Way. The telescope is so sensitive that it can measure a Human thumbnail from the Moon or the width of a stand of hair from 1000km away !!!! The spacecraft will take 7days to reach its orbit around the Sun –and once there the telescope will start to slowly turn, capturing and mapping the precise locations of all the stars & celestial bodies.