Mötesplats Rydberg: Lennart Lindegren "Microarcsecond astrometry: The Gaia mission"

Tuesday 16 Mar 2021, 15:15 → 16:15 Europe/Stockholm

Rydbergsalen / zoom (Fysiska institutionen)

Astronomical instruments operating in the radio, infrared, and optical wavelengths have advanced to a point where angular uncertainities are conveniently expressed in microarcseconds (1 microarcsec is about 5 picoradians). In the optical domain, the Gaia satellite, launched by the European Space Agency in 2013, has collected over a trillion (10^12) angular measurements to date, from which the positions, distances, and motions of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy are obtained. In synergy with large ground-based spectroscopic surveys, this extraordinary database of phase-space and photometric information is currently transforming our understanding of the composition, dynamics, and formation history of our galaxy. In this talk I explain the need for precise astrometric observations, how this is achieved with Gaia, and give a few examples of ground-breaking results from the more than 4000 peer reviewed papers using Gaia data that have appeared since the first data release in 2016.  

 

Please join the digital Mötesplats Rydberg: https://lu-se.zoom.us/j/910953381