The Gaia mission

TL;DR

The Gaia mission aims to create a precise 3D map of the Milky Way by measuring stellar positions, motions, and properties, with a focus on binary stars, and plans to release extensive data including binary star information.

Contribution

This paper provides an overview of Gaia's mission objectives, emphasizing binary star measurements and simulation results estimating millions of binary stars to be cataloged.

Findings

Simulations estimate tens of millions of binary stars will be processed.

First binary star results expected in 2017.

The mission will significantly enhance astronomical data on stellar properties.

Abstract

Gaia is a very ambitious mission of the European Space Agency. At the heart of Gaia lie the measurements of the positions, distances, space motions, brightnesses and astrophysical parameters of stars, which represent fundamental pillars of modern astronomical knowledge. We provide a brief description of the Gaia mission with an emphasis on binary stars. In particular, we summarize results of simulations, which estimate the number of binary stars to be processed to several tens of millions. We also report on the catalogue release scenarios. In the current proposal, the first results for binary stars will be available in 2017 (for a launch in 2013).