Anthony Brown (Leiden Observatory)

The Gaia mission and science highlights from the Gaia data releases

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 three
dimensions) 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.