New Video: Gaia – Teamwork for a billion stars

Today (April 21, 2016) a new video on the Gaia mission has been published: “Gaia – Teamwork for a billion stars” (see below):

Gaia is a satellite launched by the European Space Agency ESA in December 2013 with the main objective to measure the positions, motions, and distances (parallaxes) of more than one billion stars in our Milky Way.

From 16-20 November 2015 more than 200 scientists and engineers of the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC) met in Leiden, Netherlands. They discussed the status and progress of the Gaia mission in preparation of the first Gaia data release, which is planned for late summer 2016.

The GENIUS documentary by Klaus Jäger and Stefan Jordan explains the main goals of the Gaia mission. It also contains interviews and statements from several scientists directly involved in the analysis of the Gaia data. The documentary shows that Gaia is a mission covering many different aspects in astronomy and physics, and also explains how the joint teamwork from more than 400 scientists and engineers will lead to the most precise star catalogue ever.

Subtiles in English and German are available.

Financial support was provided by the GENIUS project. The Gaia outreach work in Heidelberg is supported by the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

Useful pages: 

• GENIUS
• ESA Gaia
• DPAC
• Gaiaverse
• Gaia Sky (formerly called Gaia Sandbox)
• Another Gaia video by Klaus Jäger and Stefan Jordan on the Gaia’s astrometric solution in English and German.