Workshop2022:rationale

Gaia and Gaia Alerts

ESA Gaia is continuing operations and is now well into its extended mission. In June 2022 Gaia consortium has released DR3 with a huge wealth of data products, including unprecedented astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic data. In the meantime, Gaia Photometric Science Alerts system continues its operation as a well established and leading transient survey. It discovers nearly 4000 objects a year from all over the sky, down to G=19, covering all possible classes of transients, from supernovae and CVs to rare phenomena like microlensing events or pair-instability supernovae.

Science with Gaia Alerts


 The transient discovery machine within Gaia is constantly evolving allowing for more accurate transient identification. The longer baseline of Gaia data also allows for more robust detections of photometric anomalies. The alerting system is now also sensitive to slowly changing astrophysical events such as flares in distant quasars, young stellar objects, Be-type stars and microlensing events due to massive lenses. 


Follow-up and Time-Domain Astronomy

At the same time, we are seeing significant evolution in the area of photometric and spectroscopic follow-up. Robotisation and queue-scheduling of many telescopes enables more efficient coordination of long-term time-domain observations. The demand for time-domain observations of transients and other time-varying astrophysical phenomena is increasing and the Opticon-Radionet Pilot (ORP) community is trying to address this with its BHTOM virtual observatory.

In particular, for this workshop we would like to extend the invitation to all time-domain astronomical activities, spanning all electromagnetic spectrum from radio, through optical to X-rays, and other domains (gravitational waves, neutrino detectors). We hope this workshop will be an opportunity for improving the coordination within time-domain astronomy and increasing the scientific output of surveys and follow-up observations in the multi-messenger era.

Workshop's promise


 The forthcoming Gaia Alerts Workshop, the 13th in the series, will be an opportunity to learn about the current state of Gaia and Gaia Alerts. We aim to discuss the detection, filtering, classification and publication of candidates. We will discover the most recent scientific highlights from Gaia DR3 and Gaia Alerts, and we will explore the scientific potential of Gaia.

During the workshop we will also explore the new possibilities offered by the Opticon-Radionet-Pilot H2020 in planning, obtaining and reducing in an efficient manner follow-up observations of transient alerts reported by other (non-GAIA) facilities.

Meeting in the Covid era

The successful experience of our previous meetings shows that working personal interactions are highly effective at developing plans, solving challenges, and extending partnerships to new participants. For that reason, we hope this can be primarily an in-person meeting and we should accommodate up to 50 attendees.

You are asked in the Registration to state your preference for in-person - if we are able to host that - or on-line participation. We shall certainly host on-line participation.

Given the ever-changing Covid, travel restriction and post-travel quarantine requirements, we will make a final decision on in-person participation in early-mid September. Individuals should follow their national guidance. For travel organising, please do ensure you have full cancellation and health cover insurance in place.