Calendar of Events

Speaker: Anthony Brown, Leiden Observatory

Abstract:The European Space Agency's Gaia space mission, launched in 2013 and expected to operate through 2022, is designed to measure the brightnesses, colors, positions, distances, and motions (in threedimensions) of about one 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 briefly summarize the latest data release, Gaia EDR3. This discussion will be complemented by highlights of the science results from Gaia DR2 and Gaia EDR3, showcasing the impact of Gaia on solar system studies, the Milky Way's accretion history, understanding matter in extreme states, and dark matter detection experiments.

 Host: Andrew Baker