ESA Science & Technology - Call for media: Second data release from ESA's Gaia mission

Launched in December 2013, Gaia is destined to create the most accurate map yet of the Milky Way. By making high-precision measurements of the positions and motions of stars in the Milky Way, it will answer questions about the origin and evolution of our home galaxy.

The first data release in 2016, which contained positions of more than one billion stars plus distances and motions of a subset of two million, has already generated hundreds of scientific publications. The second data release is taking the census of our Galaxy to an entirely new level, including three-dimensional positions and two-dimensional motions of more than 1.3 billion stars, as well as their brightnesses and colours.

The media briefing will showcase the content of the data release and will highlight examples of the science that will be possible.

Waiting for Gaia's second data release. Credit: ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Programme

11:00
Johann-Dietrich Wörner, ESA Director General

11:15
Josef Aschbacher, ESA Director of Earth Observation

11:20
Günther Hasinger, ESA Director of Science

11:30
Anthony Brown, Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium, Leiden University

11:45
Antonella Vallenari, Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), Astronomical Observatory of Padua

12:00
Question and answer session, and opening of the Gaia Archive

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