Topic: Galactic and Stellar Astrophysics
Session Title: Revealing the Galactic Ecosystems of the Milky Way with Gaia and GaiaNIR
Description:
The ESA Gaia mission is creating a 3-D map of over two billion stars in our Milky Way (MW) with community-powered research both challenging and refining our understanding of the complex and interlinked processes governing the formation and evolution of our MW. Looking ahead, next generation near infrared astrometry has been identified through the Voyage 2050 long term planning exercise as one of the priority areas of focus for astrophysics in the next decade. Building on Gaia in moving to the near IR, the GaiaNIR mission will probe the Milky Way’s hidden regions, building towards a comprehensive understanding of our Galaxy’s formation history.
This parallel session will focus on the most recent developments in the current understanding of the MW and the status of efforts to create a detailed standard model of the MW, linked in turn to cosmological models of galaxy formation. Topics will include interactions between the components of the MW and how they interact and influence each other across a variety of scales. For instance, how the recently revealed oldest stellar population at the heart of the MW affected the development of the MW’s disc structure seen today, and how the large scale dynamics of the MW impact on cluster formation.
Organiser(s): Nicholas Walton (IoA, Cambridge), / Vasily Belokurov, Cathie Clarke (IoA, Cambridge); Vicky Scowcroft (Bath), Alis Deason (Durham), Clare Dobbs (Exeter), Andreea Font (Liverpool John Moores), John Magorrian (Oxford), Denis Erkal (Surrey), Victor Debattista (UCLan), Daisuke Kawata, Jason Sanders (UCL)
Schedule:
Session 1: Tuesday 16th July, 09:00 – 11:00
Session 2: Tuesday 16th July, 15:00 – 17:00