Workshop2016:rationale

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Gaia has been operating already for two and a half years. Hundreds of billions of observations have been collected and with the first Gaia Data Release in September, Gaia is initiating a revolution in astronomy in general and in our understanding of the Milky Way in particular. In addition, nearly 1000 alerts have been issued by the Gaia Science Alerts group. Gaia is now the second largest provider of transients in the world! Many of the alerts has been intensively followed-up by multiple observatories, with interesting discoveries of rare types of supernovae, cataclysmic variables, microlensing events and other exotic transients.

This December we would like to gather again for the 7th Gaia Science Alerts Workshop at SRON, Netherlands Institute for Space Research in Utrecht in the Netherlands. The aims of this workshop are the following:

  • present and discuss scientific results from the Gaia Alerts so far
  • discuss further scientific drivers and dedicated topics from Gaia Alerts (TDEs, microlensing events, SNe, CVs)
  • discuss synergies between major large-scale transient surveys in order to maximise the scientific outcome of the Gaia Alerts
  • present the status and the organisation of the H2020 OPTICON follow-up network
  • receive feedback from the users to Gaia Alerts
  • discuss and recognise future steps in improving the follow-up programmes