The Gaia space mission has been providing a transformational view of the Milky Way: thanks to its exquisite astrometric precision, Gaia is measuring parallax distances and proper motions of billion Milky Way stars, thus allowing to probe immensely better the 6-dimensional phase space of our Galaxy, which in turn permits much more precise mass-orbit modeling of the Galaxy at various scales.

The series of Gaia Challenge workshops aims to bring together specialists to compare and improve their algorithms to answer fundamental questions that precise astrometric observations provide: the mass distribution and internal kinematics of

1. the galactic disk near the Sun,
2. the halo of the Milky Way,
3. globular clusters,
4. dwarf spheroidal galaxies orbiting the Milky Way (anticipating future astrometric missions).

Such analyses will allow us to understand the distribution of dark matter, i.e. its density profile from inner to outer scales, its flattening near the galactic disk, its shape beyond the disk, and its clumpiness. These analyses also return the internal kinematics of stars at various scales. In turn, these mass distributions and stellar kinematics will allow us to test standard gravity, constrain the nature of dark matter particles, as well as understand the mass assembly of the Milky Way and the formation of globular clusters.

• Date: 9-13 September 2019 (Monday morning or afternoon [TBD] to Friday noon)

• Aims of GC5:

1. Handle proper motions
2. Handle realistic proper motion errors of Gaia DR-2 (and future releases and possible post-Gaia mission)
3. Deal with interloping stars

• Venue: Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (IAP), seminar room (basement).
  

For practical information on visiting the IAP see here.
For map from RER train station to IAP with local restaurants see here.

• Participants

• Registration
• ☛ contact: Gary Mamon gam AAT iap.fr
• ☛ fee: nil

• Program

• Mock data