The Gaia mission, Gaia DR3, and science highlights from the Gaia data releases

The European Space Agency's Gaia space mission, launched in 2013, is
designed to measure the brightnesses, colors, positions, distances, and
motions (in three dimensions) of almost two billion of the Milky Way's
hundred billion stars. These measurements are yielding new insights
about the internal structure and formation history of the Milky Way,
thanks in part to a series of increasingly comprehensive data releases
that any member of the astronomical community can access. In this talk,
I will introduce the Gaia mission and summarize the latest data release,
Gaia DR3. This discussion will be complemented by highlights of the
science results from the Gaia data releases, showcasing among others the
impact of Gaia on solar system studies, the Milky Way's accretion and
recent dynamical histories, and understanding matter in extreme states.


Speaker: 
Anthony Brown (Leiden)
Place: 
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4687519297?pwd=dm0rL0FtSFNWOEY1NWQ0L2dHQXg4QT09 Meeting ID: 468 751 9297 Passcode: 1898
Host: 
Greg
Time: 
Thursday, June 1, 2023 - 3:30PM to Thursday, June 1, 2023 - 4:30PM
Biography: 
Anthony Brown is associate professor at Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, and has been involved in the ESA Gaia mission since 1997. He currently chairs the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium, a team of about 450 European astronomers and IT specialists who are in charge of turning the raw measurements from the Gaia spacecraft into a three dimensional map of over one billion stars in our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Anthony is very broadly interested in the astronomical research that can be done with the aid of Gaia data, from studies of our own solar system to understanding the formation history of the Milky Way. Anthony grew up on the island of Aruba and moved to Leiden in the Netherlands to pursue studies in astronomy. He obtained his PhD from Leiden University in 1996. He held postdoc positions in Leiden, at the Instituto de Astronomia-UNAM in Ensenada, Mexico, and at the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany, before returning to Leiden in 2001.