The second Gaia Challenge workshop, held within the Collaborative Research Center SFB881 "The Milky Way System", will take place at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, 27-31 (Mon-Fri) October 2014.

The aim of this workshop is to prepare for the exploitation of Gaia data, the first release of which is now due in late 2015. The format, as previously, is that participants are invited to apply their favorite techniques to mock data in an effort to recover underlying physical quantities, like the gravitational potential and the phase-space structure of stars. The mock data will be distributed in advance, and the workshop itself is focused on comparing and discussing results, honing the various techniques, and building collaborations. The challenges are divided into five broad categories. Four of these continue from the first workshop, held in Surrey, UK last year, but with mock datasets that are more realistic with the addition of Gaia-type errors. A new, fifth module, concentrating on the recovery of astrophysical parameters is being added.

The five modules with their current coordinators are:

1. Spherical & Triaxial (Justin Read, justin.inglis.read AT gmail.com)
2. Discs (Daisuke Kawata, d.kawata AT ucl.ac.uk)
3. Streams & Halo Stars (Andreea Font, A.S.Font AT ljmu.ac.uk & Andreas Kuepper, ahwkuepper AT gmail.com)
4. Collisional Systems (Mark Gieles, m.gieles AT surrey.ac.uk & Vincent Henault-Brunet v.henault-brunet AT surrey.ac.uk)
5. Astrophysical Parameters (Rene Andrae. andrae AT mpia.de & Kester Smith, smith AT mpia.de)

Most of the time during the week is dedicated to working on the challenges in groups of 10-20 people per module.

The program is available and updated through this link: program.

The 2014 participants list can be found here: participants.

Even though registration is closed, you can still go on a waiting list here: 2014 registration (wait list).

For logistic information follow this link: logistics.

The first Gaia Challenge workshop took place on August 19th - 23th at the University of Surrey, UK and was kindly supported by the Gaia Research for Europe Astronomy Training network.

For further information, please see previous workshops.