IoW_20160615 - Gaia

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Happy Birthday, DPAC!

Figure 1: 10 years ago - members of the Coordination Unit responsible for the DPAC Core Processing meet in Heidelberg for the first time.

Following the 1000th run of the IDT system, today marks another milestone in the history of the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC). On 15 June 2006, exactly 10 years ago, DPAC formally started its activities, with the formation of the DPAC Executive and the completion of the transfer of the data processing preparations from the Gaia community working groups to the DPAC Coordination Units (CUs).

The first major task for the Consortium was to put together a proposal in response to the ESA announcement of opportunity for the Gaia data processing. In 2007 DPAC was officially entrusted with this responsibility.

The Consortium currently consists of some 450 astronomers, software engineers, and project-management specialists, from about 25, mostly European, countries. The data processing takes place on hardware spread around six Data Processing Centres (DPCs) in Europe (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Drawing its membership from about two dozen countries, the Consortium brings together skills and expertise from across the continent, and beyond.

The first CU meetings took place in early 2006 in anticipation of the formal start of DPAC. Figure 1 shows a group photo from the first meeting of the Coordination Unit in charge of the 'Core Processing'. Well over 100 CU meetings have taken place since, as well as a similar number of smaller workshops, and countless telecons. Keeping a large consortium such as DPAC on track requires lots of communication!

The first DPAC consortium meeting, attended by about 200 DPAC members, took place last November in Leiden, The Netherlands. During the meeting the documentary 'Gaia - Teamwork For A Billion Stars' was recorded, featuring interviews with a number of DPAC members. The next consortium meeting will be held in Sitges (Spain) in January 2017.

At its 10th birthday the Consortium is close to realising its first major result with the first public release of Gaia data scheduled for the end of the summer. All DPAC members, in particular those in the 'Catalogue Access' Coordination Unit, are currently working hard on the final validation of the Gaia-DR1 processing results and on the preparations for its release.

Credits: ESA/Gaia/DPAC

[Published: 15/06/2016]