The Gaia Mission and Significance
Abstract
I provide a summary of the ESA space astrometry mission Gaia regarding its main objectives and current status following the 2nd data release (Gaia DR2) in April 2018. The Gaia achievements in astrometry are assessed with a historical perspective by comparing the DR2 content to sky surveys or parallax searches over the last two centuries. One shows that Gaia sounds more like a big leap into a new world than an incremental progress in this field.
- Publication:
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arXiv e-prints
- Pub Date:
- June 2019
- DOI:
- 10.48550/arXiv.1906.09022
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1906.09022
- Bibcode:
- 2019arXiv190609022M
- Keywords:
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- Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics;
- Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- To appear in the Proceedings of the Rencontres de Moriond 2019, Gravitation