The Gaia mission aims to create a precise three-dimensional map of about one billion stars throughout our Galaxy and beyond. In the process, it will determine their motions, which encode the origin and subsequent evolution of the Galaxy. Through comprehensive photometric classification, it will provide the detailed physical properties of each star observed: characterizing their luminosity, temperature, gravity, and elemental composition. This massive stellar census will provide the basic observational data to tackle an enormous range of important problems related to the origin, structure and evolutionary history of our Galaxy.

After a successful launch on 19 December 2013, commissioning and first years of routine operations, Gaia made its first data release on 14 September 2016. The Gaia Data Release 1 catalogues consist of:

• Positions (α, δ) and G magnitudes for all stars with acceptable formal standard errors on positions. Positions and individual uncertainties are computed using a generic prior and Bayes' rule (detailed description in "Gaia astrometry for stars with too few observations. A Bayesian approach").
• At the beginning of the routine phase, a special scanning mode repeatedly covering the ecliptic poles on every spin was executed for calibration purposes. Photometric data of RR Lyrae and Cepheid variable stars based on these high-cadence measurements will be released.
• The five-parameter astrometric solution - positions, parallaxes, and proper motions - for stars in common between the Tycho-2 Catalogue and Gaia will be released. The catalogue is based on the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution (Image of the Week with short TGAS description; paper with a more detailed description; paper describing theory and background; paper describing quasar extension). 

Attendees should consult here for more specific information on the Gaia DR1 contents.

Objectives

This workshop, jointly organised by ESA and DPAC, will give you a basic introduction to the mission concept and its performance in space, an overview of the catalogue contents including scientific quality and practical information on how to handle them for your science research. In particular, it will teach you how to interact with the data within the Gaia Archive and using Virtual Observatory protocols and tools.

There will be ample time for question and answer sessions with the mission experts to help attendees make progress with their particular science projects, and attendees will be encouraged to foster collaborations with other scientists interested in Gaia data. Participants can also take the chance to access science data from all other ESA missions and consult with the experts on site.

The week before the Gaia Data Release 2016 #1 workshop, attendees can also attend the ESAC 2016 Data Analysis and Statistics workshop that will be organised at ESAC from 25 to 28 October 2016.

Contents

• Mission description

• In-flight performance

• Contents of Gaia Data Release 1

• Data Quality

• Practical issues

       - Archive (simple and ADQL query forms)
       - Data structures and their handling
       - Visualization tools

Programme

A detailed programme is available here.

Confirmed Plenary Speakers

Frédéric Arenou

Anthony Brown

Laurent Eyer

Lennart Lindegren

Xavier Luri

Paola Marrese

André Moitinho

Alcione Mora

Timo Prusti

Jesús Salgado

Mark Taylor

Floor van Leeuwen

SCIENCE OPERATIONS CENTRE and Esac science data centre trainers

Asier Abreu

Eduardo Anglada

Enrique Del Pozo

Juan González Núñez

Gonzalo Gracia

Raúl Guitérrez

Juan Manuel Martín Fleitas

José Osinde

Mercedes Ramos

Wouter van Reeven

Juan Carlos Segovia

Alfonso Torres

​Enrique Utrilla

Registration

The registration phase for the Gaia 2016 data workshop is now closed. 

Gaia Data Workshop in Heidelberg

A similar workshop will be organised at the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut in Heidelberg from 21 to 24 of November 2016. For more information and to register for the Heidelberg workshop, visit this page.

Fee

The workshop fee is Euro 50 and is payable in cash upon arrival and registration at ESAC. It covers the coffee breaks and the bus transportation. Participants attending the workshop dinner will also be charged Euro 50 at registration time.

Hardware and software requirements

Attendees are expected to come to the workshop with their laptops to be able to participate in the hands-on sessions. Instructions will be given well before the workshop on a minimal set of software packages and data sets that might be needed for the  sessions (mostly TopCat, and other data analysis environments like python, R, IDL, etc).

Requirements:

1. Install and test TopCat​ 
2. Attendees should also enter into the Gaia archive and try their LDAP credentials (if they have) at the top right corner of the application. If they do not have credentials, they should click on "Register new user" and create a new account for the archive. This should be done a few days before the start of the workshop to allow the credentials to propagate properly through our systems.

​The hands-on sessions will use the hands-on session exercise guide (MS doc or PDF). Printed copies will be provided to participants at the front-desk.

Logistics

The workshop will take place at the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), Villanueva de la Cañada, near Madrid.

Lunch at ESAC

All workshop lunches will take place at the ESAC canteeen. All workshop participants will be charged 8 Euro for a starter, main course and desert, to be paid in cash. For those who only want a small salad and a yogourt, for example, they will then be charged for what they take. To reduce queue in the canteen, all participants are requested to bring the exact 8 Euro in cash to the canteen if possible.

The recommended workshop hotels in downtown Madrid are:

Gran Hotel Conde Duque ****
www.granhotelcondeduque.com
Euro 99 including breakfast and VAT
To make a reservation, please send an email to: reservas[at]hotelcondeduque.es , mentioning the booking reference number: 43564

Hotel Exe Plaza ****
www.hotelexeplaza.com
Euro 105 including breakfast and VAT
To make a reservation, please go to: http://www.hotelexeplaza.com/?id_referer=ESAC16

Hotel Vía Castellana ****
www.hotelviacastellana.com
Euro 105 including breakfast and VAT
To make a reservation, please go to: http://www.hotelviacastellana.com/?id_referer=ESAC16

A workshop shuttle bus will depart from and arrive to the three workshop hotels and will be clearly signed with an “ESA/GAIA WORKSHOP” sign at the front. It is covered by the conference fee and you don’t need to stay in any of the conference hotels to be able to use it. If you loose this bus, the cost of arriving to ESAC cannot be covered by the fee. Departure and arrival times are the following:

Wednesday 2 November 2016

Departure from hotels          8h00 arrival at ESAC at 9h00
Departure from ESAC          17h30 arrival to hotels at 18:30

Thursday 3 November 2016

Departure from hotels       8h00 arrival at ESAC at 9h00
Departures from ESAC     17h30 arrival at Moncloa station 18h30

                                          21h00 arrival at hotels at 22h00

Friday 4 November 2016 

Departure from hotels      8h00 arrival at ESAC at 9h00

Departure from ESAC      17h30 arrival to airport at 18:30
 

Workshop organising committee

Questions