Gaiaverse is a dissemination portal designed to help understand ESA’s Gaia mission. Thus, it’s part of the knowledge transfer through which people can get comprehensive, yet easy to understand information about our Galaxy, the stars, and planets.

The portal receives funds from the European Commission, firstly under the GENIUS project (2013-2017), and since March 2019 by the COST Action CA18104 – Revealing the Milky Way with Gaia, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology), an interdisciplinary research network that brings researchers and innovators together to investigate a topic of their choice for 4 years. In this case, the Milky Way. More information on this topic can be found on the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the implementation of the COST Action “Revealing the Milky Way with Gaia”.

The Action brings together key stakeholders from across Europe to leverage expertise and develop new techniques to fully maximize the scientific returns from Gaia’s rich and complex data. Find more on the MW-GAIA website!

Understanding COST Actions

In opposition to other EU-funded projects, it is possible to participate in an ongoing project. See the different options on how to participate in COST Actions.

The Action will have a significant legacy, creating a dynamic and vibrant network of researchers with expertise in the study of the Milky Way, its constituents and the art of Astrometry.

If you are interested in participating in this Action and need to get in touch with someone, check out the contact directory on the COST Action website.

What is Gaia?

Gaia is a satellite by the European Space Agency (ESA) whose mission is to make the largest, most precise three-dimensional map of our Galaxy by surveying an unprecedented one per cent of the Galaxy’s population of 100 billion stars. The main goal is to investigate the origin and subsequent evolution of our Galaxy.

A pan-European consortium, named DPAC (Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium) and funded at the national level, is working on the implementation of the Gaia data processing, of which the final result is, as mentioned above, a catalogue and data archive containing more than one billion objects.

CU9 is the DPAC Unit responsible to deliver Gaia data into different releases. The Gaia Archive is located at the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), which is the basis for the scientific exploitation of the Gaia data. In addition to the Gaia Archive, several Partner Data Centres offer access to the Gaia data.