Description
Organiser: Nicholas Walton; co organiser: Vasily Belokurov, Cathie Clarke, Alis Deason, Victor Debattista, Denis Erkal, Andreea Font, Daisuke Kawata, John Magorrian, Jason Sanders, Vicky Scowcroft
The ESA Gaia 3-D map of over two billion stars in our Milky Way (MW) coupled with community-powered research is both challenging and refining our understanding of the complex, interlinked processes governing the formation and evolution of the MW.
Next generation near infrared astrometry has been identified through the ESA Voyage 2050 process as a candidate ESA Large (L5) mission. Building on Gaia heritage, the GaiaNIR mission will probe the Milky Wayโs hidden regions, enabling a comprehensive understanding of galaxy formation across time.
The lunch session will include an update on the GaiaNIR mission (from the GaiaNIR PI, David Hobbs, Lund). It will include talks detailing GaiaNIRโs prime science goals, for example showing how its survey of some 15 Billion sources concentrated in the inner regions of the MW, un-surveyed by Gaia but transparent to GaiaNIR, will untangle the complex interplay of the MW ecosystem. This revealing, for example, how the oldest stellar population at the heart of the MW affected the development of its disc structure seen today. The baseline design for the instruments on GaiaNIR will be presented, noting significant recent developments (driven from the UK) in nearIR detectors, which in turn opens the possibility for a wider range of instrument capabilities.
The opportunity for UK researchers to become involved in developing the case, scientific and technical, for GaiaNIR, through the nascent GaiaNIR:UK group, will be highlighted. This timely as planning for GaiaNIR is accelerating, with key decisions to be taken in the next few years.
The field of Galactic archaeology has been transformed over the last decade thanks to the Gaia revolution. In particular, Gaia provides the full 6D phase-space information for stars in the local halo, allowing us to characterise their orbits and integrals of motion (IoM), such as energy and angular momentum. During an accretion event, stars from a single merger are deposited onto similar...
The galactic ecosystems theme is a candidate science theme for the ESA Voyage 2050 Large 5 launch slot. The GaiaNIR mission is proposed, based on the heritage and operational principles of the current Gaia mission, with the notable difference that the detectors would give coverage reaching into near infra red wavelengths. This would allow observations of stars in our Milky Way in regions of...
The oldest, most metal-poor stars in the Milky Way were born in pristine environments in the early Universe, and contain unique clues about the early formation and evolution of our Galaxy. The number density of these stars is expected to increase strongly towards the inner few kpc of the Milky Way, a challenging environment to study due to the distance, crowding, interstellar dust and an...
The Gaia mission has revolutionised astronomy in recent years. However, much more can be achieved by harnessing Near InfraRed (NIR) light using new state-of-the-art detectors to peer through the dust and gas to reveal the hidden regions of the Galaxy. A new all-sky NIR astrometric mission will expand and improve on the science of Gaia using basic astrometry. NIR astrometry is crucial for...
